Now I Understand Why They Hate Us

By David Hilfiker, AlterNet. Posted January 12, 2009.

Despite the sanctions, the Iraqi army continued its occupation of Kuwait, so in January 1991, the United States led a coalition of nations in a military attack on Iraqi occupation troops in Kuwait, forcing a hasty retreat. While the military power of the United States and its allies easily overpowered Iraqi forces, the coalition decided for political reasons only to repel the Iraq invasion of Kuwait and attack Iraq by air but not to invade Iraq with ground troops or use military force to remove Saddam completely from power. But during the six-week air war, the Iraqi military had been decimated, including the complete destruction of the air force. The civilian infrastructure of Iraq -- including electrical generation, sanitation and water purification -- had been profoundly damaged.

The Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait fulfilled the stated objective of the U.N. economic sanctions. Nevertheless, the United States government insisted upon continuing the stringent economic sanctions upon Iraq. The intent was to force the people of Iraq to remove Saddam from power, even though it is illegal under international law to punish a population in order to provoke it to overthrow the government. Unfortunately, the original U.N. resolution did not provide for automatic withdrawal of the sanctions upon Saddam's compliance with its requirements to remove his forces from Kuwait; rather, the resolution's language required the passage of a new Security Council resolution to relax or abolish the sanctions. According to Security Council rules, however, any of the five permanent members of the Security Council can veto any new resolution. Over the next 12 years the United States -- sometimes joined by Great Britain -- made clear its objection to any lifting of the sanctions and vetoed periodic attempts by other nations to end them. In other words, although these were technically United Nations sanctions, they continued only because of United States insistence.

Given the previous devastation of Iraqi infrastructure, however, the severity of these sanctions was so extreme that the catastrophic effect on the civilian population (including the deaths of countless civilians) was predictable and inevitable. Indeed, documents obtained later reveal that senior officials within the United States government were well aware of the impact that the sanctions would have upon civilians. Specifically banned by the sanctions, for instance, were replacement parts required to repair the damaged electrical power plants, sanitation infrastructure and water-purification facilities throughout the country. Millions of Iraqis would be drinking contaminated water. The United States maintained these highly lethal sanctions until after the beginning of the Iraq war in May 2003.

While the exact number of casualties is unknown, the United Nations estimated that half a million Iraqi children died between 1991 and 1998 because of the sanctions, most from malnutrition and waterborne disease. Before the 1991 war and the economic sanctions, Iraq had been one of the most advanced countries in the Middle East, with low childhood mortality, high levels of education and relative freedom for women. Although the 1995 U.N. Oil-for-Food Program allowed Iraq to sell some of its oil for food and certain medications, the sanctions remained brutal, preventing repair of the electrical grid or sanitation systems. As a result, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, especially children, died; hundreds of thousands more were permanently affected by malnutrition and disease.

As I visited Iraqi families in late 2002, it was not unusual to walk along city ditches filled with sewage in a country that 15 years earlier had been the most modern in the Middle East. I talked with workers at a water-treatment plant. Even when they could jury-rig repairs to the machinery, the intermittent electricity (usually off at least half the day due to the continuing damage to the electrical grid) meant that for those hours there was no pressure in the water pipes -- that paralleled or went right through those sewage ditches -- thus allowing bacteria from the sewage to seep into the pipes. When the power went back on the pipes carried the now-contaminated water to families for drinking.

I also discovered that since 1991, United States air power had patrolled the skies to enforce "no-fly zones" in north and south Iraq, frequently attacking what they believed were military installations, often killing civilians. What was my country doing? How could the reliance on lethal force become such an accepted part of American life that not even the intentional murder of upward of 500,000 children raised any eyebrows? How was this possible?

I returned to the United States in January 2003 as our government was preparing to invade Iraq to realize that few Americans were paying attention to the devastation we had perpetrated in Iraq for the previous 12 years (just as I had not previously paid attention). When I talked with my liberal acquaintances, they were so focused on the Bush administration's aggression that few were willing to consider the bipartisan approval of these sanctions, which were initiated during the George H.W. Bush administration, continued during the Clinton administration, and would only be lifted after we had toppled Saddam's government. Few Americans seemed to care, and the few reports of their deadly effects on Iraqi children were buried in the media and inspired little passion.

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David Hilfiker, M.D., spent his medical career as a physician with low-income people in rural Minnesota and inner-city Washington. He is the founder of Joseph’s House, a home and hospice for homeless men and women with AIDS and/or cancer. No longer in active practice, he is a lecturer and teacher and author of books and numerous articles on poverty and other subjects. His most recent book is Urban Injustice: How Ghettos Happen.

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