|
Last edited February 14, 2003 (written November 10, 2001)
Atrocities in Iraq
by @jay Shenoy
As the shock of the atrocities committed on September 11th fades, people are more and more often asking the essential questions: “Why did they do this? What did we ever do to them?” The media claims that they were religious fanatics, haters of American culture, or simply homicidal maniacs. They conveniently forget to mention some of the horrific crimes against humanity committed in the Middle East and other parts of the world by the US government. One of the most relevant to the tragedy of September 11th is the ongoing genocidal aggression against Iraq. Since the beginning of the Gulf War, bombings and economic sanctions have nearly destroyed Iraq and left its people suffering. Despite the fact that the Gulf War is over, the bombings and sanctions continue. The US and Britain are the primary supporters of this aggressive behavior, which would have ended long ago if the two nations did not continue to apply pressure to sustain it. Their excuse for these actions is that Iraq refuses to allow the UN to disarm it and inspect its weapons. The hypocrisy of this explanation is that the US has never acquiesced to UN weapons inspections on the account of national security, and neither nation would ever agree to any form of disarmament, even of biological and nuclear devices that are unlikely to ever be necessitated in any war or incident. Despite this blatant double standard, the horrific bombings and sanctions, meant to pressure Saddam Hussein into accepting UN disarmament policies, are instead only doing grievous injustice and injury to the innocent Iraqis under his dictatorial rule. This belligerence against Iraq has created the perfect conditions to transform innocent civilians into terrorists like those who hijacked and piloted the airplanes that leveled the World Trade Center and crippled the Pentagon.
The most obvious and well known of the crimes committed against Iraq is the constant bombing. Since 1998, the US and Great Britain have conducted around 20,000 air strikes on Iraq (UN Security Council Press Release). The strikes have been conducted in the very inaptly named “no-fly zones”, which cover 65% of the country. The zones were “...established unilaterally and without any decision by United Nations...” (UN Security Council Press Release) 42% of these strikes have caused human casualties. Out of those killed by these strikes, 144 were innocent civilians. 466 more civilians were injured in the attacks (UN Security Council Press Release). The reasons for the civilian casualties are obvious; while the US and Britain have claimed that the strikes were not directed at civilians, “International experts had attested to the contrary.” Indeed, it is unlikely that anyone, expert or not, will argue that facilities used to distribute food are valid military targets. The shelling has also damaged buildings related in no way whatsoever to anti-air. In fact, UN personnel have had to evacuate their posts any number of times because their lives were threatened the strikes (UN Security Council Press Release). Every day, explosions rack cities in Iraq, and all too often, the victims of these attacks are as innocent as those lost in the WTC.
The other half of the aggressions against Iraq is the enforcement of economic sanctions, which have received far less in the way of media coverage than the bombings, which themselves didn’t receive nearly enough coverage on the humanitarian front. Of the two crimes, the sanctions are by far the more horrific. Since August 2, 1990, the UN, at the insistence of mainly the US, had imposed economic sanctions to prevent the import of various supplies necessary to maintain the purity of Iraq’s water supply, such as chlorine and aluminum sulphate (DIA). The problem with these sanctions is that they harm all of the wrong people. Saddam Hussein and his supporters are for the most part the only ones in the country with access to safe water. Innocent civilians, on the other hand, have faced casualties of a genocidal degree. As of February 22, 1999, the death toll was estimated at 1.5 million*, mostly children, who have the least resistance to the chemical and biological agents present in the unpurified drinking water. Since then, an average of ten children have died every hour (UN Security Council Press Release 23). Every month, Iraq has faced losses topping those murdered on September 11th. As if the innocent lives lost were not enough, it is quite obvious that the US knew what the consequences of its actions would be long before they became evident to the world. It knew that “Heavy mineralization, suspended solids and, frequently, high salinity characterize Iraq's water supply.” Iraq’s groundwater and lakes are, for the most part, saline or brackish (DIA). The minerals in the water can cause diarrhea on the short term and stones forming inside the body in the long term. Worst of all, bacteria and other harmful agents in the water can cause “…epidemics of such diseases as cholera, hepatitis, and typhoid…” The dangers of these diseases are compounded by the fact that the unpurified water may have contaminated the medicine produced to combat them (DIA). Iraq’s water treatment facilities cannot function without purifying chemicals like chlorine or reverse electrodialysis ion exchange membranes, both of which are denied to Iraq by the sanctions (DIA). Pure water is only available to those who can afford to have it smuggled around the sanctions or shipped into the country from far off, the same people whose policies are supposed to be influenced by these sanctions, also the only people unaffected by them. Instead, the common people, people completely innocent of the crimes committed by their government, in many cases the victims of these same crimes, are the ones who are punished, apparently punished for living.
Not only is the appalling treatment of Iraq immoral and inexcusable, it is a very real contributing factor to terrorism. As people suffer in Iraq, they tend to think about who is to blame for their misery. Since the sanctions have been imposed and sustained mainly at the urging of the US, the reasonable conclusion is that the US is responsible for their privation. Next, they think about who makes the decisions in the US. The US is always trumpeting that it is the leader of democracy in the world. The definition of a democracy is basically a government where the people make the decisions. Therefore, the Iraqis, and quite possibly others who sympathize with them, deduce that the US people are the ones who are responsible for their abuse, and so are valid targets for violence. Despite the slight naivety and copious flaws of this line of thought, a normal person can see the desperate logic, if not the justification or morality, of this concept. The terrorists who believe this have obviously been so gruesomely maltreated that they do find it to be just. They apparently have no idea that most of the American people have no idea of what is happening in Iraq and how many people suffer there on a daily basis. Another point to consider is the fact that the bombings and sanctions against Iraq have created the perfect conditions for terrorists to be created. People are most susceptible to becoming terrorists when they are children, and the environment in which a child grows up in Iraq far from ideal. If a child’s parents and grandparents die thanks to the bombings or sanctions, they will have no one to show them what is right and what is wrong, what is true and what is false. They will not even come to truly understand Islam itself, making them more susceptible to the twisted interpretation followed by militants who use their religion to justify violence, ignoring the fact that Islam does not permit the killing of innocents. In addition, the children of Iraq will find that many of their siblings, friends, and other loved ones will fall victim to sanctions-induced disease or explosions and shrapnel from bombs dropped by the US and Great Britain. At such a young age, to have to watch so many people one care’s about die, the children will doubtless be extremely traumatized. It is these disturbed youths who are sought out and recruited by terrorist organizations, and from there on taught to kill and destroy. This problem is compounded by the fact that many Iraqi children do not have the privilege of being taught anything else. The conditions created by the untreated water and bombings have made it nearly impossible to create an effective schooling system, and the sanctions have made obtaining supplies necessary to operate a school difficult to obtain (United Nations Security Council Press Release). Children with no education, who cannot even read or write, are children with no future. If a child cannot dream about the future, then all he or she can do is wallow is his or her own hatred. Truly, Hatred is one of the few things that the country is not short on, and is easily the main cause of not only the events of September 11th, but also terrorism in general. The source of the Iraqi people’s hatred is easy to understand; their family and friends are dying all around them. The same hatred, in a somewhat smaller dosage, has infected many Americans around us. Thanks to the hijackings and their grisly aftermaths, some Americans have taken extreme, jingoistic action, including threats and violence, against Asians living in the US. Doubtless the Iraqi people have also been afflicted with this blind rage, but their losses are hundreds of times greater than ours, and so also is their fury. All of this leads to an endless cycle of violence. Hatred feeds off of itself, as is demonstrated by the hatred of the American people towards the Middle East due to the events of September 11th, which in turn came about thanks to the hatred of the common people towards the US, which in turn came about thanks to crimes like the despicable treatment of Iraq. The chain could probably be followed years into the past, which goes to show that the chain could easily continue years into the future. An endless cycle of violence, fueled by ever growing hatred, could be a blood soaked express bus whose last stop is the destruction of the human race.
The appalling events of September 11th have deep roots in the inexcusable treatment of Iraq. Some will argue that Osama bin Laden, suspected mastermind behind the attacks, did not commit his crime against humanity due to any real and substantial reason, and slaughtered so many innocents for his intolerant and extremist interpretation of Islam. Perhaps this argument has some validity, but the fact remains that bin Laden himself did not pilot an airplane full of civilians into a skyscraper. The people who actually carry out kamikaze missions are common people, like any American citizen. Or at least they were, until something horrific and unforgivable was committed against them. These people had true grievances against the US, and while their actions will forever be completely reprehensible, they did have very real reasons for their misguided act. If the US wishes to fight a true war on terrorism, one aimed at eliminating the causes of terrorism, as opposed to proving to the world how big and tough it is, then it should end its own crimes against humanity, such as its apathetic and inhumane policies towards Iraq. The US cannot call other nations and organizations terrorists until it stops being a terrorist itself.
* This number is what the source says; however, recent checks say that number may be off, and that the real death toll is closer to 500,000; still, that isn't a number to laugh off
Works Cited
United Nations. Security Council Press Release. "SECURITY COUNCIL MEETS TO CONSIDER HUMANITARIAN SITUATION IN IRAQ; SECRETARY-GENERAL DESCRIBES ‘MORAL DILEMMA’ FOR UNITED NATIONS." 4 Mar. 2000: < http://srch1.un.org/plweb-cgi/fastweb?state_id=1003628984&view=unsearch&docrank=1&numhitsfound=3&query=6833&&docid=487&docdb=pr2000&dbname=web&sorting=BYRELEVANCE&operator=adj&TemplateName=predoc.tmpl&setCookie=1 >
United Nations. Security Council Press Release. "IN CURRENT SECURITY SITUATION, DISTINCTIONS BETWEEN COMBATANTS, NON-COMBATANTS BLURRED, GERMANY TELLS SECURITY COUNCIL." 22 Feb. 1999: < http://srch1.un.org/plweb-cgi/fastweb?state_id=1003629326&view=unsearch&numhitsfound=3&query=6646&&docid=193&docdb=pr1999&dbname=web&sorting=BYRELEVANCE&operator=adj&TemplateName=predoc.tmpl&setCookie=1 >
United States. DIA. "IRAQ WATER TREATMMENT VULNERABILITIES (U)." 18 Jan. 1991: < http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/declassdocs/dia/19950901/950901_511rept_91.html >
|
