Iraq in 1991 negotiated a ceasefire. Saddam Hussein pulled back from Kuwait. The stated objective of the coalition was achieved. The UN mandate was fulfilled. The war was over. Twelve years of the most comprehensive sanctions regime ever imposed on a country followed.
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Iraq in 1991 negotiated a ceasefire.
Saddam Hussein pulled back from Kuwait.
The stated objective of the coalition was achieved.
The UN mandate was fulfilled.
The war was over.
Twelve years of the most comprehensive sanctions regime ever imposed on a country followed.
Five hundred thousand Iraqi children died.
Not from bombs. From the sanctions.
From the inability to import medicine.
From the destruction of water treatment infrastructure.
From the systematic economic strangulation of a country that had agreed to the terms it was given.
Madeleine Albright was asked in 1996 whether the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children were worth it.
She said: "We think the price is worth it."
On camera.
With her name attached.
Then in 2003, after twelve years of compliance with weapons inspection regimes, after twelve years of sanctions, after twelve years of no-fly zones enforced by American and British aircraft over sovereign Iraqi territory:
They invaded anyway.
There were no weapons of mass destruction.
They knew there were no weapons of mass destruction.
The sanctions had worked.
The inspections had worked.
The compliance had worked.
They invaded anyway.
Because the compliance was never the point.
The compliance was the process by which Iraq was weakened enough to be finished.
Negotiations. Compliance. Sanctions. Inspection regimes. Another decade of negotiations. Invasion.
This is the sequence.
This is what "negotiations" produced for Iraq.
Half a million dead children as the price of the ceasefire.
Two million dead as the price of the invasion.
A country that has not recovered twenty years later.
This is the table they invite you to.
posted by Satish Sharma at
11:13
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