May 13, 2006
May 12 was the ten year anniversary
of a public defense of genocide. On that date Bill Clinton's
then UN Ambassador Madeleine Albright was asked on "60 Minutes"
how she could justify the deaths of over 500,000 Iraqi children
from the sanctions. She was asked by journalist Leslie Stahl
whether the cost was "worth it". She replied that
it was "worth it" because Saddam Hussein was "coming
clean" on weapons and had recognized Kuwait. She said her
first responsibility was "to make sure United States forces
not have to go and refight the Gulf War."
The 500,000 figure was based
on a letter that that researchers for the UN's Food and Agricultural
Organization had sent to British medical journal, the Lancet,
in December '95 estimating that 570,000 children had died up
until that point as a result of the sanctions. The news of the
letter made national nightly TV news and there was even a substantial
article in the New York Times. Those of us exposing the terrible
toll of the sanctions were heartened. Now the facts were finally
getting out. Something would be done. Yet the months ticked
by and and the toll mounted. Then five months later came Stahl's
interview with Albright.
Half a million children children
had died and our UN Ambassador had not denied it! Her responses
on why it was "worth it" exposed her and Clinton as
brutal, heartless, callous! Surely now something would be done.
But all that was done was the
creation "Oil for Food" program. Iraq could sell oil
and the proceeds would be put in a bank in New York. A chunk
went to Kuwait for reparations. A chunk went to the Kurds in
autonomous northern Iraq. A chunk went to the UN itself. Then
Iraq could ask that its remaining money could be used for food
and medicine and every other desperately needed item.
The result was that whatever
moral upset there was among the powers that be was satisfied.
How much it helped Iraqi people can only be debated. More supplies
got in, but infrastructure had so badly deteriorated that the
ghastly death rate never really decreased very much. And in
acts of deliberate calculation (or sadism) the UN Sancitons committee
would selectively allow in items in a way that made them useless,
like allowing in insulin, but not refrigeration units, so the
insulin went bad. By 1998 things were so bad that Denis Halliday,
the UN administrator of the Oil for Food program resigned in
protest and began calling the sanctions "genocide".
He eventually claimed that the sanctions had caused over one
million civilian deaths.
And all the time Clinton and
Albright and the rest knew Saddam had nothing. Scott Ritter,
the aggressive US marine, turned UN arms inspector had verified
that the SCUD missiles aresenal had been destroyed or accounted
for way back in 92. In the fall of '95 Rolf Ekeus the head of
UN Special Commision on Iraqi weapons (UNSCOM) filed a report
saying that all missile, chemical, and nuclear production facilities
in Iraq had been dismantled. Clinton and Albright killed all
those children not out of any real fear of Saddam, but for reasons
of empire.
All this is as they say "ancient
history" and by definition irrelevant. Albright has not
only never been brought to the Hague, she has not had to face
a single grieving Iraqi mother or father. In fact she is lionized
wherever she goes. This consumate violator of the most serious
precepts of international law was recently feted at the Yale
Law School! Clinton is still a king-maker among the Democrats
and his wife who sat by while all those children were sacrificed
is front runner for the brass ring. There was a investigation
into an "Oil for Food" scandal, but it wasn't into
finding who was responsible for the children that were killed,
but into money officials and businessmen were raking off.
As they say "No use crying
over spilt milk", but I bring all this up because what may
happen in Gaza. The Olmert government of Israel with the collaboration
of the Bush regime is taking unprecedented measures of "pressure"
on the Palestinians. $55 million a month in Palestinian tax
money is being withheld from the Palestinian by the Israeli government
as "pressure". The main crossing into the strip,
the Karni Crossing, has been shut down half the time since January
1st. At times the bakeries of Gaza have to shut down because
there is no flour.
Europe and the US are doing
their part, suspending aid programs to the Palestine Authority.
Pressure. Pressure. Dov Weinglass a key adviser to Olmert made
a joke about it, "The idea is to put the Palestinians on
a diet, but not to make them die of hunger"
Maybe they are not dieing of
hunger yet, but they are dieing. Four died at Shifa Hospital
last month when the facility cut their dialysis treatments by
a third because it doesn't have enough supplies. Chemotherapy
treatments are being suspended and results are predictable.
It's getting so bad that even the New York Times reported about
it. On May 8 a front page article was devoted to the shortages.
As Ali Abunimah put it on ElectronicIntifada.net
on May 10,
"Suppose I were to leave
my office here in Chicago and walk the short distance to the
kidney dialysis unit down the road and pull out the tubes to
which four elderly patients were attached, making them seriously
ill or killing them. Suppose I said I did this because I disagreed
with the Bush Administration's invasion and occupation of Iraq,
its use of torture, and its countless other profoundly undemocractic
and illegal policies. What would that make me? A murderer for
sure, a monster and a new vicious kind of terrorist. Such an
action would be unconscionable in any moral system. And yet
this is what the so-called "international community,"
a few powerful governments, feel entitled to do to Palestinians
because those governments disagree with the policies of the elected
Hamas authority."
There has been polite criticism
of the strangling of Gaza so the Adminstration has come up with
new PR. Secreatry of State Rice has said "we'll be talking
about a plan to provide substantial, new in-kind, rapid intervention
into the health care situation so that Palestinians can have
health care." So big of her. They'll airlift in a case
of band-aids. "Oil for Food" writ small.
How bad can it get? This country
sanctioned to death a million Arabs and not one of the guilty
paid a price. So if it serves their interests the lords of the
empire will do it again.
Stanley Heller is chairperson the Middle East Crisis
Committee and can be reached at mail@TheStruggle.org.
The full transcript of Madeleine's incriminating remarks to
Leslie Stahl can be found in the articles section of www.TheStruggle.org