In Iraq, a decade of harsh sanctions under US pressure has strengthened Saddam while leading to the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis - perhaps more people "than have been slain by all so-called weapons of mass destruction throughout history", military analysts John and Karl Mueller wrote in Foreign Affairs in 1999.
The above quote is from an article in the Australian newspaper The Age, published on 7 September, by Noam Chomsky.
Since Professor Chomsky, among others, continues to peddle the notion that our UN-approved sanctions against Iraq are killing the citizens of Iraq, I would like the professor to read the following paragraph from this article on CNN:
In the Gaza Strip, about 2,000 Palestinians demonstrated in support of Iraq, while leaders of the local branch of Saddam's Baath party passed out $10,000 checks to the families of 36 Palestinians killed by Israeli soldiers in the past three months.
This is $360,000 that could be used to feed Iraqi citizens, or to buy medical supplies to treat Iraqi sick. I have never seen any condemnation of these payments from any of the anti-war left—Chomsky and Moore and Rall and all of the idiots over at The Nation—yet they assail the sanctions as the cause of death and destruction. Fiscal malfeasance by the Iraqi government has never been addressed.
In addition, Iraq appears to be in violation of the same international standards for which the left has excoriated the US in the past. Both the Israelis and the Palestinian Authority (if the PA are really serious about ending the suicide attacks) should be complaining to the UN about Iraqi interference in their internal affairs, just as Nicaragua and Angola complained about US financial support of their rebel movements, both within their borders and externally (some of the Nicaraguan contras were based in Honduras).
Instead, the anti-war lefties continue to blame only the US and Israel for September 11, 2001, and for all of the strife in the Middle East. Their blind, naked hatred of the democratic values espoused by these two countries baffles me, as they seem to support the same values, but champion causes antithetical to the ideals they claim to cherish.
posted on September 12, 2002 09:32 AM
