In searching for evidence of
the potential danger posed by Iraq, the Bush Administration need have looked no
further than the well-kept record of U.S. manipulation of the sanctions program
since 1991. If any international act in the last decade is sure to generate enduring
bitterness toward the United States, it is the epidemic suffering needlessly visited
on Iraqis via U.S. fiat inside the United Nations Security Council. Within that
body, the United States has consistently thwarted Iraq from satisfying its most
basic humanitarian needs, using sanctions as nothing less than a deadly weapon,
and, despite recent reforms, continuing to do so. Invoking security concerns --
including those not corroborated by U.N. weapons inspectors -- U.S. policymakers
have effectively turned a program of international governance into a legitimized
act of mass slaughter.
Since the U.N. adopted economic
sanctions in 1945, in its charter, as a means of maintaining global order, it
has used them fourteen times (twelve times since 1990). But only those sanctions
imposed on Iraq have been comprehensive, meaning that virtually every aspect
of the country’s imports and exports is controlled, which is particularly
damaging to a country recovering from war. Since
the program began, an estimated 500,000 Iraqi children under the age of five
have died as a result of the sanctions -- almost three times as many as the
number of Japanese killed during the U.S. atomic bomb attacks.