Dear Editor:
Following the reasoning of Lester Tenney's excellent article on the
need for Japanese compensation for WW II crimes,
Americans should start making plans to pay the immense compensation
due Iraqi families for the killing of their loved ones by
U.S. sanctions. The latest UNICEF report calculated that 500,000 children
died because of the war and sanctions. The
overwhelming majority of deaths were caused by conscious decisions
to make it impossible for Iraq to import enough spare
parts and supplies to maintain its sewage and medical systems.
This is a terrible violation of the Geneva Convention on Conduct of
War. No matter what Saddam Hussein has done or what
weapons he may possess, deliberately killing the civilians he rules
over is a war crime. The "Oil for Food" plan that the U.N.
administers to supposedly protect civilians is absurdly inadequate.
Estimates are that even with that program in effect there are
4,500 excess deaths of children very month. Denis Halliday, the UN
official who ran the program, resigned in protest.
The defense that Hussein’s regime could end the sanctions
if he did what he was told is entirely beside the point. By law
there are things you must not do even in wartime. The mass killing
of civilians is one of them. A Connecticut man, Chris Doucot,
went to Iraq in July and met a woman in a hospital tending to her last
child. Six others had died. She was too malnourished to
breast feed. The child in the hospital was sick because his formula
was mixed with contaminated water, contaminated because
U.S. officials purposely prevent water-purifying chemicals from being
imported into Iraq.
It’s true that the sanctions were imposed by the U.N. Security
Council, but the U.S. government calls the shots there. It
is our government that is responsible for the sanctions. We U.S. taxpayers
are liable for hundreds of billions of dollars in
compensation due Iraqi families.
Unlike Imperial Japan no power rivals Imperial America. We can rest
smugly in the belief that the Iraqis won’t ever get
a dime. Yet it is certain that one day millions of Americans will realize
what was done in their name and they will despise Bush,
Clinton and their own complacency.
Sincerely,
Stanley Heller
Chair
Middle East Crisis Committee