Why? From the beginning the sanction imposers offered the oil-for-food option. Saddam refused to use it until 1997. Once it was put in place, according to Garfield, the deaths effectively ended.
Do the sanction imposers bear any blame for the deaths when Saddam refused to use the method explicitly offered to avoid those deaths?
Sua
*This argument, of course, assumes that Garfield’s analysis is correct.
Ack, one other caveat. Even if oil-for-food started from the get-go, there would still have been additional deaths, as the sanctions lessened the GDP of Iraq, and poverty correlates with higher mortality rates.
Dunno is anyone has, or can, put a number on that hypothetical situation.
Sua
Yes, morally they share the blame with Saddam. Whether, given the nature of the Saddam regime, it was an unavoidable price that had to be paid is another question but in the end a lot of people died from sanctions we imposed and continued even when it was becoming clear what the consequences were.
It’s easy to salve our consciences by saying it was all Saddam’s fault but to me that’s too glib. In the end the west designed and maintained a sanctions regime that punished a tyrannised people for the actions of their ruler.
100,000 + dead children cannot be dismissed with a realpolitick shrug. We could have lifted the sanctions for the sake of the Iraqi people.
For whatever reason, good or bad, we did not and so, yes, I think at the end of the day we have to share responsibility even if we believe it was necessary, which I reiterate is another argument.
But actually, the west designed and maintained a sanctions regime that would have (as post '97 events attest) fed the Iraqi people. Saddam refused to cooperate with that regime, and, as a consequence, people died.
It’s akin to a prisoner on a hunger strike. If the prisoner dies from malnutrition, is it the warden’s fault? The food was right there for the prisoner to eat.
Sua
Maybe it’s just me, but the writer was way harder on one side of the issue than the other. Anyway, the following struck me as relevant:
I hope we’re not blaming Saddam for improper breast-feeding. He also notes that sanctions like these often lead to reduced purchases of medical goods and the like even when the embargo doesn’t target them specifically. The lack of medical equipment, not just the oil-for-food program, gets a lot of the blame here, and most of the posts I’ve seen don’t address this.
My emphasis. 350,000 possible deaths is plenty (which is not to downplay the importance of being accurate), and that’s not even the end of it. Damage that will harm many was also done in removing Saddam and after.
If Saddam is not to blame, why are the Elite Republican guard well uniformed, healthy, have brand new tanks and anti-GPS devices?
If Saddam is not to blame, why were over a billion US dollars found in the hideout of a Saddam loyalist which may not even be the same billion that was stolen by Saddams son.
How can the regime smuggle in (illegal) dual purpose devices for farming as found by Blix and co, but not make the same effort for cancer equipment and drugs?
If these cancer patients were really an issue and they cant import the medicine and equipment (which they say they are were more than ready to buy) why didnt they just spend the money allocated to buy equipment and drugs to send the patients to a neighboring country that has the facilities?
and what about all those presidential palaces with the marble floors and the gold faucets and crystal chadeliers, not just one but 20 of them all throught Iraq, some constructed after sanctions were imposed. And what about those legendary bunkers? those must be a fortune to build. Those dont even take into account the personal homes of the elite guard and higher ups and their secret hideouts, not to mention Odays “love shack”.
Saddam can freely spend 10 thousand dollars (each) for the family of a suicide bomber in Palestine but wont do the same to the family of a child dying of cancer? According to Saddam, these children are patriots because they are dying of the spent uranium leftover from the first gulf war. I guess Iraqi patriots dont need compensation.
The billions spent obtaining marginally acceptable items for use in war could just as easily have been spent on those “suffering under UN sanctions”. Less would have died and Saddam couldve been more credible in his call for the end of sanctions. As it is, those who died because of US sanctions can be counted with the other poeple whom Saddam had killed. These he merely allowed to die.
The banning of chlorine apparently was one of the reasons that Iraq had poor sanitation and hence a high rate of disease.
Here’s a snippet from an article that references a declassified Defense Intelligence Agency
article source: http://www.progressive.org/0901/nagy0901.html
the declassified document: http://www.nonviolence.org/vitw/old_site/pages/139.htm
So apparently many deaths can be directly attributed to the sanctions, not Saddam’s missappropriation.
Maybe, but the Reagan administration certainly believed that Iraq would fall if the U.S. didn’t step in:
–Sworn testimony of Howard Techier, former National Security Council official
All those points only came about because Reagan stepped in. If he hadn’t, Saddam Hussein would probably not have lived long enough for GeeDubyaBush to rattle sabers against.
Huh? Point No. 3, for example, was purely on the Iranian side. How da heck did Reagan support for Iraq cause the Iranians to use ill-fated tactics?
Iranian tactics in that war came about because a big chunk of the Iranian officer corps was purged after the revolution, and revolutionary ideology led to a concept of “allow yourself to be martyred to defeat the enemy.” As Patton noted, the idea is not to die for your country, it’s to make the other SOB die for his.
Said ideology also asserted that religious fervor was a perfectly fine substitute for training. A belief disproven by unbelievable losses amongst the Pasdaran.
As for point #2 Iraq was better equipped because it hadn’t been cut off from its weapons supply. Iran had US weapons - and couldn’t get replacements, spare parts, etc., while Iraq had Soviet weapons - and could.
Quite frankly (no cites, just my own analysis), I don’t think US military support could have been that effective, as US supplies would have been incompatiable with the Iraqis Soviet weapons.
Finally, for point No. 1, Iran’s economy was a mess after the revolution, while Iraq’s was humming along pretty well (can’t find GDP data for that long ago, so going on memory). I strongly doubt that US aid is was made the Iraqi economy stronger than the Iranian one at the time.
Sua
The article said “100,000 dead.” Not “100,000 children dead.” Major difference.