From: "Liam Connell" <liam.connell-AT-britishlibrary.net>
Subject: Re:Re: MARGARET WENTE's article is obscene 
Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2001 14:59:05 +0100


Anna,

While I think you are completely correct to suggest that the Iraqi
government bears responsibility for deaths of Iraqi civilians and that
Hussein is a malicious dictator who has ruthlessly manipulated the political
systems in Iraq for his own benefit, it is really too much to suggest that
the West has no responsibility at all.

The sanctions notwithstanding, ten years of bombing raids by British and
American air forces has been responsible for significant numbers of civilian
casualties: events which don't even make it into the mainstream media in
either the UK or the US.  While this may be justified on the basis of
Hussein's chemical and biological weaponary, I do have a recollection that
George Bush recently sought to tear up international treaties on arms
control on the basis that they were obsolete.  If the Iraqi government is
implicated in Western bombing - through its unwillingness to surrender its
internationally recognised sovereignty - it is not _responsible_ for the
bombing.  Santa Claus _is_!

As for the sanctions, while Western governments refuse to accept that these
are directly responsible for the lack of available medicine, the stark facts
are that the Iraqi government will not direct humanitarian funds towards
medicine and the Western governments know this.  However, they refuse to
make any moral connection between these actions and their own.  Whatever the
reason, if sanctions have the effect of human suffering that is their effect
and to persist with the policy while repeatedly insisting on our innocence
is a wilful disregard for innocent lives.

To take another example of Santa Claus's beneficence we might wish to
consider the similar programme of sanctions imposed for several decades on
Cuba.  These sanctions have likewise seen the needless suffering of ordinary
Cubans, including children, due to a lack of available drugs, including
anaesthetics for operations.  The US government knows this but will not
admit culpability here either.  What was Cuba's offence?  Having a political
system that the US disagreed with.  I think that the exemplary system of
public health in Cuba - far superior to that in the US by the way - should
absolve the Cuban government of the sorts of accusations you level at its
Iraqi counterpart.  So who is to blame for needless suffering?

The accusation of naivety is too easily made.  Surely what the last month
has demonstrated is that the consequences of international policy are
complicated and various and that we should not simply believe the
protestations of innocence by the governments in the West concerning the
conditions in the numerous countries upon which they exert their influence.

[For Brian this message is written in plain text]



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