Iraqis Still Suffer From Gulf War
By Erik Gustafson
The writer is a veteran of the Gulf War and director of the Education for
Peace in Iraq Center
(www.saveageneration.org).
Madison, Wis. - On the eve of my deployment to Saudi Arabia in January
1991 for the Gulf
War, I was pulled aside by a Seattle news crew. A reporter asked me, "What
do you expect
once you're there?" I answered: "My feelings are irrelevant. We are just
the tools used
when the decision is war."
At the close of the war, President George Bush declared, "The specter of
Vietnam has
been buried forever in the desert sands of the Arabian Peninsula."
But the lessons of Vietnam should never be forgotten. No matter how popular
a war might
be, there is always a price to pay - on both sides.
Popularizing the Gulf War to bury the memory of Vietnam harms those affected
by both
wars. We cannot forget the sacrifice of more than 58,000 Americans and
millions of
Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians killed in the Vietnam War. Nor should
we hide the
ongoing human costs of the Gulf War.
The war we waged against Iraq was one of the most ecologically destructive
wars of the
past century. Hundreds of thousands of American soldiers were exposed to
health and
environmental hazards by being camped downwind from burning oil fields
and blown-up
chemical and biological weapons depots. Many were also exposed to uranium
oxide
particulates unleashed by the impact of thousands of highly toxic depleted
uranium shells,
which the allies used for the first time. And for civilian populations
living in these
contaminated areas, the incidence of cancer and other diseases is up, according
to
Robert Fisk of the London Independent newspaper.
The consequences are well known within the veteran community. Since 1991,
more than
130,000 Gulf War veterans have been classified as disabled by the Department
of
Veterans Affairs. This is more than 25 percent of those who served in the
Gulf War and is
nearly double the percentage of Vietnam veterans and nearly triple the
percentage of World
War II veterans who were classified as disabled.
In Iraq, tens of thousands died during the Gulf War, mostly noncombatants.
In the years
since, more than 1 million Iraqi civilians are believed to have died, including
hundreds of
thousands of children, as a result of war damage and a decade of U.S.-enforced
economic
sanctions. This is a war that is supposed to have ended, yet it continues
to this day.
Last month, I joined a Veterans for Peace delegation of American veterans
traveling to Iraq
to begin restoring four water facilities near Basra that were damaged by
the war. We
became witnesses to the silent war.
In 1991, Pentagon officials acknowledged that water and sewage facilities,
electrical
plants, transportation networks and other essential civilian infrastructure
had been
deliberately targeted during the Gulf War. A Pentagon strategist explained
in an interview
with The Washington Post: "Saddam Hussein cannot restore his own electricity.
He needs
help. The U.N. coalition can say, 'Saddam, when you agree to do these things,
we will
allow people to come in and fix your electricity.' It gives us long-term
leverage."
As a result, water-borne diseases have been epidemic since the war. Long-term
leverage
has done nothing to dislodge Saddam from power or make him comply with
U.N. Security
Council demands.
But the notion of long-term leverage has held sway throughout the Clinton
administration.
According to Rep. Tony Hall, D-Ohio: "Holds on contracts for the water
and sanitation
sector are a prime reason for increases in sickness and death. Of the 18
contracts on
hold, all but one hold were placed by the U.S. government." Ironically,
our veterans'
delegation was fixing facilities rendered inoperable by U.S. policy.
In Basra I met Hayder (a pseudonym), an Iraqi veteran. Hayder spoke eloquently
of the
plight of his people, caught for decades between warring governments. He
spent five years
on the front lines in the IranIraq War and engaged in bloody trench warfare.
His unit took
casualties in the hundreds, sometimes thousands.
"I lost so many friends," Hayder told us, "that I had to stop making friends."
A journalist in
our delegation asked, "Did you ever have doubts about why you were in the
war?" Hayder's
answer echoed my own words nearly 10 years ago: "As a soldier, we are tools.
No
questions. Only orders."
This Veterans Day, I hope our nation's policy-makers remember the price
- both physical
and psychological - paid by servicemen and -women and the civilians caught
in the
middle.