US Iraq Policy:
Policy or Humorless Joke?
by Sean Gonsalves
 
If you want some real insight into the principles and workings of U.S.
foreign policy, then a new book edited by Anthony Arnove is indispensable
reading.

It's called "Iraq Under Siege: The Deadly Impact of Sanctions and War" - a
collaborative work destined to be studied by future scholars as the first
book to grant a glimpse behind the veil of ideology and propaganda that
shrouds the contemporary official record.

The State Department line is a familiar theme. We went to the Persian Gulf to

defend freedom and democracy, restore "stability in the region" and beat back

Saddam Hussein - the second coming of Hitler; an ideologically convenient
fact that somehow escaped everyone's notice when Hussein was a buddy of ours
gassing all those Kurds.

You know our Kurdish brothers and sisters. They're the official reason we've
been bombing Iraq just about every other day since 1998, patrolling the
so-called no-fly zones. We blow up something in Iraq with such frequency that

it's been relegated to the news brief sections of our newspapers.

Of course, you'll have to excuse the Kurds for not having shown proper
gratitude for our services. They're busy trying to escape slaughter at the
hands of our allies in Turkey, who exterminate them with weapons we sell the
Turkish military. In fact, we've even allowed our Turkish friends to go into
northern Iraq and kill Kurds in the Iraqi no-fly zone! Orwell would most
certainly be amazed.

Imagine how safe Kurds must feel. "Is that an Iraqi bomb or an
American-supplied ballistic missile? Why? Well, if it's an Iraqi bomb they'll

pay for it, too. If not, only we pay for it - with our lives."

No doubt, head-in-the-sand apologists for the "free-market" will continue to
talk about "globalization" as an inevitable nirvana; ignoring the stark fact
that the current global market hierarchy is maintained with a mind-numbing
amount of violence and deceit. All this with a straight face, mind you.

This is not a laughing matter, you might say. Well, after reading "Iraq Under

Siege," the idea that our foreign policy planners are concerned about human
rights will become a sick joke - a dark comedy, laughable even in the
Communist councils of China.

Much disinformation has been spread concerning the oil-for-food program that
the United Nations runs. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright talks as if
the food that the U.N. buys by selling some of Iraq's oil is enough to feed
civilians.

Well, the guy who ran the oil-for-food program until he resigned a few years
ago in protest of the sanctions, saying he refused to be part of genocide any

longer, has a different take on the matter.

"Firstly, oil-for-food was never intended to actually resolve the
humanitarian crisis. It was designed to stop further deterioration. It was
designed to build on what the Iraqi government was already doing and is still

doing. They have a separate food distribution program for those on fixed
incomes, orphans, war widows and others, which has continued throughout,"
explains Denis Halliday.

The U.N. Security Council, Halliday says, has politicized the program,
second-guessing the cost or need of the supplies that the Iraqi government
requests.

"The young bureaucrats who sit on this committee in New York are not
technical people. In fact, they don't want technical advice. So, for example,

when the Iraqis asked for 500 ambulances, approved by the World Health
Organization as minimal under the circumstances, these were initially blocked

in their entirety and then slowly, over a period of six to nine months, were
released - 100, 200 ambulances - really picayunish stuff, inexcusable," he
says in an interview with David Barsamian.

Phyllis Bennis, an Institute for Policy Studies fellow and longtime
journalist who has covered the Middle East, points out a much ignored aspect
to U.N. Resolution 687, which started out as an order to dismantle Iraq's
weapons of mass destruction program. Recall that the U.S. official policy was

no lifting of the sanctions until Iraq's weapons of mass destruction
capabilities had been rendered useless. That was done by 1997, and then the
official U.S. policy switched. There will be no lifting of the sanctions
until Hussein is out of office.

It's a policy that violates international law, but that's something policy
planners pretend to care about when broken by official enemies.

"It's important to think about another aspect that often gets ignored.
Besides the imposition of sanctions and dealing with weapons of mass
destruction, 687 also calls for creation of a weapons of mass
destruction-free zone, which means a nuclear weapons-free zone, throughout
the Middle East," Bennis points out. This is another fact ignored by the
media and avoided by the Clinton administration.

"That's very significant, because the U.S. refuses still to officially
acknowledge Israel's nuclear arsenal. The United States has been the party
primarily responsible for providing weapons to Saudi Arabia, Turkey and
Israel," she reports.

For 10 years now, we've had Iraq in the clenches of our iron-fist policy,
ensuring that a whole generation of Iraqis will grow up deeply resenting
America. The policy is also the reason we have absolutely no credibility as
humanitarians or defenders of freedom on this volatile planet.

But don't take my word for it. Read the book (www.lbbs.org/sep/sep.htm to
order it) and make up your own mind.
 

Sean Gonsalves is a Cape Cod Times staff writer and syndicated columnist. He
can be reached via email: sgonsalves@capecodonline.com