IS Waging Another War on Iraq Justified?

Why should Iraq be punished again? Using American parameters, the United States and Israel are the foremost rogue states in the world using dirty politics and naked aggression to bully and terrorize people all over the world. It seems strange why the United States did not do away with Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction when they had the chance to do so in 1991. Why is it 12 years down the road that the Americans voice their concern over the suffering of the Iraqi people and over Iraq’s so called arsenal of chemical and biological weapons?

In the Gulf War the amount of explosives dropped on Iraq in the first day alone (January 17, 1991) of air and naval attacks was equivalent to the explosive power of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. This military onslaught on a defenseless people included the first-time use of 300 tons of depleted uranium shells plus a frightening array of other internationally banned radiological, biological, and chemical weapons. All in all, over 140,000 tons of explosives, equivalent to 7 nuclear bombs, were used against the Iraqi society in destroying their environment and infrastructure.

Unfortunately, the war against the Iraqi people did not end with the cessation of military attacks in 1991, but continues to this very day with a suffocating blockade that has already claimed over one million civilian lives, the vast majority of whom are children and the elderly. More than 500,000 toddlers and infants have died due to the consequences of the sanctions (UNICEF, 1999). Twenty-three percent of all children in Iraq have stunted growth, approximately twice the percentage before the war. A 1995 FAO report ("Crop and Nutrition Status Assessment Mission") states that child mortality level in Iraq has risen nearly fivefold since 1990. Alarming food shortages are causing irreparable damage to an entire generation of children.

It is hard to imagine that Americans would tolerate a conventional military campaign that caused almost exclusively civilian deaths numbering a million or more, many of them children under the age of 5, no matter how worthy the ends sought. But 12 years of sanctions have accomplished just that, while evoking scarcely a ripple of public protest.

Sanctions -- which will come up for renewal in Congress this month -- were originally instituted to compel Iraq’s withdrawal from Kuwait. Iraq refused, and was forced out militarily in early 1991 through Operation Desert Storm. Sanctions against Iraq -- a country devastated by war, dependent on oil exports for 90 percent of its foreign revenue and one that imports 70 percent of its food -- were nonetheless re-imposed after the Gulf War.

Another war waged upon Iraq would be of catastrophic consequences especially in terms of civilian causalities. Humanitarian and relief agencies have already voiced their concerns of such an eventuality. However the Pentagon has already unveiled their war plan. Pentagon’s war plan for Iraq calls for unleashing 3,000 guided missiles and bombs in the first 48 hours of the opening air attack. Pentagon also intends to target chemical and biological facilities as well as missile sites with high-powered microwave weapons called “E-bombs” which would simply fry computer circuits needed to operate such systems. Such bombs would trigger power failures and cause water and sanitation problems. Lack of drinkable water would certainly cause the spread of several water related diseases and epidemics. This in itself will certainly increase the mortality rate as Iraqi hospitals are ill equipped to deal with such crises.

Russia, Germany, France, Greece and China have already distanced themselves from United States clamor for launching a full-fledged attack upon Iraq.

However that seems to have little effect upon Washington’s plans to decimate and obliterate Iraq.