By Ibrahim Abdil-Mu'id Ramey
NEW YORK (LCNP) March 2006 - I'm probably not the only one to make this observation, but it does seem to me that the conflict over the Iranian nuclear policy is rooted, at least to some extent, in the male-centered, pseudo-phallic gamethink of "mine is bigger than yours" being played out, to possibly tragic consequences, by Presidents Ahmadinejad and Bush.
While issues of global security, terrorism, national sovereignty, and regional stability are thrown around by both parties as arguments against the other, all of this seems to be, in the final analysis, a geopolitical "pissing contest" between the Number One global imperial nuclear bully and the Third World upstart who wants to come onto the playground and get props for having the requisite technology to play in the big game.
But for all the reasons that we know, it's a no-win situation for the people of Iran, the people of the Middle East, the people of the USA, and ultimately, all of humankind.
Why no-win? Because if Bush "wins" by forcing international sanctions (or God forbid, a US invasion) on Iran, Tehran's inevitable response will be resistance and counter-attack. Thousands, and even millions, of combatants and noncombatants on both sides would perish.
And if Mr. Ahmadinejad somehow wins by avoiding (at least in the short term) either United Nations sanctions or a US attack, he's still stuck with an environmentally dangerous technology, and (if he goes for the weapons option), an imminently target-able nation made vulnerable to attack from both the United States and Israel.
All this is typical of the binary, win-lose paradigm that men put on the table of virtually every conflict. But it is a dysfunctional way of thinking that places us all in grave danger.
Forget Tel Aviv's 200 or so nuclear warheads in the Dimona facility. Forget, even, the 8,000 thermonuclear weapons in the United States arsenal. The best way for Iran to neutralize these weapons in any form of retaliatory attack is not to give either nation the made-to-order pretext to use them.
Sure, there may be some cockeyed Strangelove-ian "prestige" in having the technology to process uranium ore into nuclear fuel or nuclear warheads. But it is the prestige of fools. The deadly effect of this technology -- even when atomic explosions don't happen -- is awesome legendary (ask the Shoshone indigenous people in Nevada, or the Marshall Islanders, about the impact of nuclear testing and nuclear waste storage on the cancer rates of children in those places).
Does the President of Iran know this? He should. He must. And he should know, too, that the enormous cultural prestige of the Persian people greatly exceeds any ephemeral glory that might come from Iran's capacity to join the dangerous, foolish, and unholy community of nuclear weapons states.
Others will have their nuclear power and nuclear weapons. Let them. Because, as a Muslim, President Ahmadinejad should know that the Qur'an of Islam exhorts believers to compete in acts of charity and goodness and mercy, and not acts that lead to mutually assured destruction. And in that light, I would invite both the Iranian and American presidents to see the 1980s movie War Games, and note the wise words of the WOPR war computer at the end of the film: "The only winning move ( in the nuclear war game) is not to play."
Nuclear weapons are, quintessentially, male weapons. They are manufactured, deployed, tested, and even used, in ways that virtually no mother could fathom. And if world leaders continue to have deep, foolishly phallic attachments to these most dangerous of boy toys, let them meet in some anonymous men's room somewhere on the planet and actually see who has what.
And while they're at it, they should agree that their own private ego/power/size games should remain their games, not to be played at the peril of the world.
I would suggest, as start, that both nations "disemploy" their nuclear R&D scientists and, in the Iranian case, have all of these bright men ( and possibly a few of their female colleagues) start turning the enormous solar power potential of the Iranian desert into renewable, non-polluting power for the people. The U.S could also "gift" appropriate solar technology to Iran as a gesture of international friendship and non-aggression.
Of course, the obvious security benefit to both nations is this: Iran would have no nuclear facilities to target. The United States would not be threatened by any WMDs that Iran could, theoretically, possess.
Then the empirical evidence of yet another nuclear threat directed against the West would be lessened. And the regime in Tehran could breathe a little easier, because the U.S. Marine Corps has never, to my knowledge, invaded a foreign nation because sunlight shines on it.
All this, of course, is predicated on a major shift of thinking toward nonviolence, renewable energy, and new priorities for Iran, but especially for the ruling elite of the U.S.A.
Women can offer, collectively, a great deal toward the building of a new, and better, global problem-solving model. And we all should support Iranian women in joining their sisters in the United States (and the United Kingdom) in building the relationships necessary to work this thing out.
Because if there is ever a need for a feminist understanding of international conflict resolution, it is, clearly, now.
Wednesday, March 1, 2006
Friday, September 1, 2000
But What About Saddam?
By Ibrahim M. Abdil-Mu'id Ramey
New York (FORUSA) Sept. 1, 2000 - If Saddam Hussein is a brutal thug and an international outlaw, then why not just send a CIA assassination team into Baghdad to "take care" of him? Or kill him with bombs and cruise missiles? Or at least cook up a plot that guarantees his political overthrow?
Before the Gulf War, the dinar was worth approximately three dollars.Now, there are approximately 2,500 dinars to one U.S. dollar.
We've come to expect that kind of talk from the folks at the State Department and the Pentagon and the CIA, who make a living, in part, from creating or obliterating foreign governments, depending on their usefulness to US national (read: business) interests. The corporate media and the State Department have created a feeding frenzy among the US population over the notion of Saddam's ouster, if not his murder. They have made Saddam the rationale for the continuation of ten years of sanctions against the Iraqi people. And arguably, Saddam's persistence as the leader of Iraq is a key factor in justifying high levels of post-Coldwar Pentagon spending, as well as continued US military assistance to Israel.
But all of us must wrestle with this convoluted knot of a problem: How, in fact, do we view Saddam? And what, if anything, should we attempt to do about him?
Given the corporate media view of Saddam put out for mass consumption, it's easy to understand the incredible amount of fear and loathing directed against the Iraqi leader by US conservatives and liberals alike. Saddam is, after all, a man who waged an incredibly bloody (and insane) war against his neighboring nation, Iran; a man who directed the use of deadly chemical weapons (made in facilities built by Western corporations) against his own Kurdish population; and a man who, despite the clear mandate of the United Nations Security Council, reneged on the agreement to allow for UN inspections of biological, chemical, and possibly nuclear weapons. All of this is in addition, of course, to the ample evidence of a litany of heinous crimes directed by Saddam's Ba'ath Party and his military against a wide array of Iraqi dissidents, democratic opposition figures, and even members of his own ruling circle. (The writer Said Abourish, in his tell-all book entitled Saddam Hussein: The Politics of Revenge, relates a particularly gruesome story in which, in a fit of rage,
Saddam removed one of his cabinet ministers from a meeting, only to usher the unsuspecting man into a side room of the Presidential Palace where he dispatched him - personally - with a bullet to the head.)
For most of the vast US political mainstream - good people who believe in freedom, justice, and the truth of everything printed in the New York Times - Saddam Hussein isn't just bad for Iraq: Saddam Hussein is Iraq. And never mind the long history of Western arms, money, and intrigue, including evidence of pre-Gulf war CIA intervention in support of Saddam, or even the sheer brutality of the overkill of the war and the (arguably) intentional US attacks on Iraqi people and infrastructure far away from the action in Kuwait. Saddam Hussein al-Tikriti is the epitome of unadulterated evil in the modern world, and this conflated man/nation must be opposed, and neutralized, at all costs. For many, including noted leaders in the civil rights and human rights community, if the cost includes economic sanctions against Iraq, then the cost is worth it.
The religious pacifist positions on the Gulf war, and on Saddam himself, are different. It is not easy to explain to others outside the orbit of our day-to-day work why we don't call for Saddam's "removal" in light of his ghastly record on human rights in Iraq. And given the demonization of Saddam in the US press, it is hard to establish the moral credibility, among some people, of our opposition to Iraq sanctions.
It is obvious to everyone working on behalf of the Iraqi people that the UN/US sanctions against Iraq are immoral and genocidal because they target civilians and kill the helpless and innocent. Yet Saddam's personal character, his penchant for political violence, and even his use of mass murder as an instrument for maintaining power, can neither be ignored nor dismissed as irrelevant to people of faith and conscience. Religious community solidarity against the sanctions (and against the waves of intermittent military attacks upon Iraq) is one thing. The Iraqi dictator is quite another. And while there is no huge amount of anti-Saddam rhetoric flung about in our political discourse (especially by those folks who have occasion to travel to Iraq), it's no secret that Saddam Hussein is regarded as a very, very bad man that most folks would like to go away.
So what do we say about Saddam? And how should that position shape and define our work on issues related to Iraq?
Our Marxist colleagues and fellow activists on the Left have sometimes been moved to defend Saddam as just one more victim of Western imperialism. And I do admit that, generally, the secular Left has a sharper and more historically detailed analysis of political economy than does the religious pacifist community. We should learn from this, and incorporate it into some of our worldview. Imperialism, particularly the US variant of it, is real, bloody, and extraordinarily oppressive, especially to peoples who have suffered from colonization and ongoing domination. The people of Iraq, like most of the non-European world, fall into this category.
But imperialism also requires the complicity of despots, crooks, hustlers, and murderers from the exploited nations, especially those with great appetites for power, glory, and guns.
The "anti-imperialist" camp needs to recognize that Saddam Hussein has, over more than twenty years, played this game to the maximum, especially during the Iraq-Iran war, when he treated the "imperialist" arms suppliers as a personal shopping mall. And while the Iraqi people are clear victims of imperialism, they are also victims of generations of home-grown tyrants who sometimes feed at the plate of empire and sometimes defy the imperialist powers, but always, always, mistreat and abuse their own people.
Our beliefs in both nonviolence and humanity demand that we respond to the mistreatment and suffering of the people of Iraq, whether these are caused by their own government, or by ours. And while confronting the horrendous policies of the US government must remain our first priority, we must not turn a blind eye to Saddam Hussein or dishonestly pretend that he is only a victim of US military violence and power machinations.
But there are some other things that people of faith must not do.
First, the demand for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein only strengthens the hand of the real imperialists - bankers, militarists, and CIA types - who lob cruise missiles and cruel sanctions on Baghdad in the mistaken notion that Saddam can be bombed out of power, or that his people, once sufficiently starved and bludgeoned by economic warfare, will rise up against him. It hasn't happened, and isn't likely to. And even if this scenario were to occur, it would hardly insure the transition to nonviolence and real, popular democracy - not the bogus made-in-the-USA variant - that is so desperately needed in Iraq (and for that matter, nearly everywhere else in the world).
Nor is it plausible to suggest that peace advocates, in conjunction with the US government, should openly encourage, arm, and assist the Iraqi opposition to strike at Saddam. Iraqi opposition leaders remember the last time the US made such promises at the end of the Gulf war. The US then pulled out, allowing the Kurdish and Shi'ite opposition, and innocent civilians, to be slaughtered by the Republican Guard and their chemical weapons. The United States government - the Left is right on this point too, I believe - would only manipulate the anti-Saddam opposition to be more compliant with US, rather that Iraqi, geopolitical interests.
Yet there are some things that we must do in response to Saddam, the US government, and most of all, the Iraqi people.
First, we must passionately advocate nonviolent and non-military solutions to the current crisis in and with Iraq, even when violence, to some, seems both plausible and inescapable. Military attacks, including the imposition of the notorious US-British "No Fly Zone" over Iraqi airspace, are not acceptable. Our long-term - and it may be very long-term - interests are in ending violence and oppression in all forms, not only when they are embodied in individuals whom we just love to hate. And, Saddam notwithstanding, we must relentlessly expose the role that the global arms trade and the multinational oil companies played, and continue to play, in maintaining anti-democratic and corrupt regimes in Iraq, and all over the world.
Second, we must work for the massive rebuilding of Iraqi civil society, and the reintegration of Iraq into the global community. Saddam is not the Iraqi people, and arguably, despite his enormous power, is not the same as their entire government, either. An Iraq suffering from economic attack and isolation isn't likely to be an incubator of either peace or democracy.
Third, we must support the building of a legitimate, strong, and un-bossed UN that can be a real arbitrator of global conflicts and, in the interim (some pacifists may disagree with this, but it's my essay), a genuine international force able to provide real protection for populations at risk of genocide.
Fourth, we must maintain a real arms embargo, but extend it to the entire region. We must create real sanctions against nations and corporations that insist on selling conventional, or other, weapons to Iraq. This embargo must be enforced within the context of a regional arms embargo (including Israel), and while advocating a global commitment to end the arms race, period.
Finally, and centrally, we must challenge the notion of a permanently oil-driven and profit-driven domestic economy. We must call into question the political and military apparatus protecting that economy at the expense of the well-being of the vast majority of the human community, especially the people of the Third World.
I certainly believe that understanding imperialism, as well as opposing it, is necessary. But our anti-imperialism must be, for us, part of a larger and deeper faith-centered opposition to all forms of human oppression and suffering, and not some one-dimensional rhetorical opposition to the United States and its frequently obnoxious foreign policy.
It is important for us to maintain the high ground, and the integrity, of faith-based nonviolence in our Iraq work. We must resist the tendency to either ignore Saddam's violence, or to explicitly or implicitly join with others who call for his violent overthrow. Nonviolence based on faith simply doesn't have tidy and immediate solutions to many violent political issues. But we do, and must, hold on to the belief that the trajectory of world events, and of justice, will eventually, in the long run, lead humankind, including the people of Iraq, to the beloved kingdom of the Creator's peace and justice.
I am commanded that I must not kill, or advocate murderous actions by others. And my work is not to destroy Saddam. My work is to strive to overturn systems of hatred, economic greed, and violence - in the United States, in Iraq, and wherever - so as to guarantee a different, just, and nonviolent future for both his nation, and my own.
New York (FORUSA) Sept. 1, 2000 - If Saddam Hussein is a brutal thug and an international outlaw, then why not just send a CIA assassination team into Baghdad to "take care" of him? Or kill him with bombs and cruise missiles? Or at least cook up a plot that guarantees his political overthrow?
Before the Gulf War, the dinar was worth approximately three dollars.Now, there are approximately 2,500 dinars to one U.S. dollar.
We've come to expect that kind of talk from the folks at the State Department and the Pentagon and the CIA, who make a living, in part, from creating or obliterating foreign governments, depending on their usefulness to US national (read: business) interests. The corporate media and the State Department have created a feeding frenzy among the US population over the notion of Saddam's ouster, if not his murder. They have made Saddam the rationale for the continuation of ten years of sanctions against the Iraqi people. And arguably, Saddam's persistence as the leader of Iraq is a key factor in justifying high levels of post-Coldwar Pentagon spending, as well as continued US military assistance to Israel.
But all of us must wrestle with this convoluted knot of a problem: How, in fact, do we view Saddam? And what, if anything, should we attempt to do about him?
Given the corporate media view of Saddam put out for mass consumption, it's easy to understand the incredible amount of fear and loathing directed against the Iraqi leader by US conservatives and liberals alike. Saddam is, after all, a man who waged an incredibly bloody (and insane) war against his neighboring nation, Iran; a man who directed the use of deadly chemical weapons (made in facilities built by Western corporations) against his own Kurdish population; and a man who, despite the clear mandate of the United Nations Security Council, reneged on the agreement to allow for UN inspections of biological, chemical, and possibly nuclear weapons. All of this is in addition, of course, to the ample evidence of a litany of heinous crimes directed by Saddam's Ba'ath Party and his military against a wide array of Iraqi dissidents, democratic opposition figures, and even members of his own ruling circle. (The writer Said Abourish, in his tell-all book entitled Saddam Hussein: The Politics of Revenge, relates a particularly gruesome story in which, in a fit of rage,
Saddam removed one of his cabinet ministers from a meeting, only to usher the unsuspecting man into a side room of the Presidential Palace where he dispatched him - personally - with a bullet to the head.)
For most of the vast US political mainstream - good people who believe in freedom, justice, and the truth of everything printed in the New York Times - Saddam Hussein isn't just bad for Iraq: Saddam Hussein is Iraq. And never mind the long history of Western arms, money, and intrigue, including evidence of pre-Gulf war CIA intervention in support of Saddam, or even the sheer brutality of the overkill of the war and the (arguably) intentional US attacks on Iraqi people and infrastructure far away from the action in Kuwait. Saddam Hussein al-Tikriti is the epitome of unadulterated evil in the modern world, and this conflated man/nation must be opposed, and neutralized, at all costs. For many, including noted leaders in the civil rights and human rights community, if the cost includes economic sanctions against Iraq, then the cost is worth it.
The religious pacifist positions on the Gulf war, and on Saddam himself, are different. It is not easy to explain to others outside the orbit of our day-to-day work why we don't call for Saddam's "removal" in light of his ghastly record on human rights in Iraq. And given the demonization of Saddam in the US press, it is hard to establish the moral credibility, among some people, of our opposition to Iraq sanctions.
It is obvious to everyone working on behalf of the Iraqi people that the UN/US sanctions against Iraq are immoral and genocidal because they target civilians and kill the helpless and innocent. Yet Saddam's personal character, his penchant for political violence, and even his use of mass murder as an instrument for maintaining power, can neither be ignored nor dismissed as irrelevant to people of faith and conscience. Religious community solidarity against the sanctions (and against the waves of intermittent military attacks upon Iraq) is one thing. The Iraqi dictator is quite another. And while there is no huge amount of anti-Saddam rhetoric flung about in our political discourse (especially by those folks who have occasion to travel to Iraq), it's no secret that Saddam Hussein is regarded as a very, very bad man that most folks would like to go away.
So what do we say about Saddam? And how should that position shape and define our work on issues related to Iraq?
Our Marxist colleagues and fellow activists on the Left have sometimes been moved to defend Saddam as just one more victim of Western imperialism. And I do admit that, generally, the secular Left has a sharper and more historically detailed analysis of political economy than does the religious pacifist community. We should learn from this, and incorporate it into some of our worldview. Imperialism, particularly the US variant of it, is real, bloody, and extraordinarily oppressive, especially to peoples who have suffered from colonization and ongoing domination. The people of Iraq, like most of the non-European world, fall into this category.
But imperialism also requires the complicity of despots, crooks, hustlers, and murderers from the exploited nations, especially those with great appetites for power, glory, and guns.
The "anti-imperialist" camp needs to recognize that Saddam Hussein has, over more than twenty years, played this game to the maximum, especially during the Iraq-Iran war, when he treated the "imperialist" arms suppliers as a personal shopping mall. And while the Iraqi people are clear victims of imperialism, they are also victims of generations of home-grown tyrants who sometimes feed at the plate of empire and sometimes defy the imperialist powers, but always, always, mistreat and abuse their own people.
Our beliefs in both nonviolence and humanity demand that we respond to the mistreatment and suffering of the people of Iraq, whether these are caused by their own government, or by ours. And while confronting the horrendous policies of the US government must remain our first priority, we must not turn a blind eye to Saddam Hussein or dishonestly pretend that he is only a victim of US military violence and power machinations.
But there are some other things that people of faith must not do.
First, the demand for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein only strengthens the hand of the real imperialists - bankers, militarists, and CIA types - who lob cruise missiles and cruel sanctions on Baghdad in the mistaken notion that Saddam can be bombed out of power, or that his people, once sufficiently starved and bludgeoned by economic warfare, will rise up against him. It hasn't happened, and isn't likely to. And even if this scenario were to occur, it would hardly insure the transition to nonviolence and real, popular democracy - not the bogus made-in-the-USA variant - that is so desperately needed in Iraq (and for that matter, nearly everywhere else in the world).
Nor is it plausible to suggest that peace advocates, in conjunction with the US government, should openly encourage, arm, and assist the Iraqi opposition to strike at Saddam. Iraqi opposition leaders remember the last time the US made such promises at the end of the Gulf war. The US then pulled out, allowing the Kurdish and Shi'ite opposition, and innocent civilians, to be slaughtered by the Republican Guard and their chemical weapons. The United States government - the Left is right on this point too, I believe - would only manipulate the anti-Saddam opposition to be more compliant with US, rather that Iraqi, geopolitical interests.
Yet there are some things that we must do in response to Saddam, the US government, and most of all, the Iraqi people.
First, we must passionately advocate nonviolent and non-military solutions to the current crisis in and with Iraq, even when violence, to some, seems both plausible and inescapable. Military attacks, including the imposition of the notorious US-British "No Fly Zone" over Iraqi airspace, are not acceptable. Our long-term - and it may be very long-term - interests are in ending violence and oppression in all forms, not only when they are embodied in individuals whom we just love to hate. And, Saddam notwithstanding, we must relentlessly expose the role that the global arms trade and the multinational oil companies played, and continue to play, in maintaining anti-democratic and corrupt regimes in Iraq, and all over the world.
Second, we must work for the massive rebuilding of Iraqi civil society, and the reintegration of Iraq into the global community. Saddam is not the Iraqi people, and arguably, despite his enormous power, is not the same as their entire government, either. An Iraq suffering from economic attack and isolation isn't likely to be an incubator of either peace or democracy.
Third, we must support the building of a legitimate, strong, and un-bossed UN that can be a real arbitrator of global conflicts and, in the interim (some pacifists may disagree with this, but it's my essay), a genuine international force able to provide real protection for populations at risk of genocide.
Fourth, we must maintain a real arms embargo, but extend it to the entire region. We must create real sanctions against nations and corporations that insist on selling conventional, or other, weapons to Iraq. This embargo must be enforced within the context of a regional arms embargo (including Israel), and while advocating a global commitment to end the arms race, period.
Finally, and centrally, we must challenge the notion of a permanently oil-driven and profit-driven domestic economy. We must call into question the political and military apparatus protecting that economy at the expense of the well-being of the vast majority of the human community, especially the people of the Third World.
I certainly believe that understanding imperialism, as well as opposing it, is necessary. But our anti-imperialism must be, for us, part of a larger and deeper faith-centered opposition to all forms of human oppression and suffering, and not some one-dimensional rhetorical opposition to the United States and its frequently obnoxious foreign policy.
It is important for us to maintain the high ground, and the integrity, of faith-based nonviolence in our Iraq work. We must resist the tendency to either ignore Saddam's violence, or to explicitly or implicitly join with others who call for his violent overthrow. Nonviolence based on faith simply doesn't have tidy and immediate solutions to many violent political issues. But we do, and must, hold on to the belief that the trajectory of world events, and of justice, will eventually, in the long run, lead humankind, including the people of Iraq, to the beloved kingdom of the Creator's peace and justice.
I am commanded that I must not kill, or advocate murderous actions by others. And my work is not to destroy Saddam. My work is to strive to overturn systems of hatred, economic greed, and violence - in the United States, in Iraq, and wherever - so as to guarantee a different, just, and nonviolent future for both his nation, and my own.
Thursday, December 9, 1999
Sanctions Hit Children Hardest
By Ibrahim Abdil-Mu'id Ramey
NEW YORK (USA Today) Dec. 9, 1999 - Can moral Americans watch with indifference as 200 Iraqi children die each day due to the economic blockade imposed against their nation by the United Nations and, more directly, the United States? The Fellowship of Reconciliation, the world's oldest interfaith peace and justice organization, says, ''No!''
The terrible events of the 1990-91 Gulf War created a firestorm of mass destruction and death in Iraq. More than 100,000 Iraqi soldiers died in the conflict, while the coalition's air war destroyed or seriously damaged thousands of Iraqi electrical power stations, water treatment plants, grain fields, factories and food storage facilities far from the front lines. Iraq emerged from the war as a militarily defeated and economically decimated nation.
Severe international economic and military sanctions, imposed on Iraq since 1990, have continued the effects of the war. The military sanctions have ended Iraq's capacity to deploy biological, chemical and atomic weapons. But economic sanctions have impacted Iraqi civilians, resulting in catastrophic shortages of food, medicine, drinkable water and more.
Adequate food cannot be produced because Iraq lacks seeds, fertilizer, tractors and the electricity needed for irrigation equipment. Cities and towns are flooded with untreated waste and unsafe water. Medicine cannot be adequately distributed inside Iraq because of the lack of refrigerated storage facilities.
All of this adds up to the death each day of an estimated 200 Iraqi children under 5 years of age, an April 1998 UNICEF report found. These are not Republican Guard commanders, secret policemen, government officials or even members of Saddam Hussein's family. They are children.
While we celebrate the last Christmas, Hanukkah and Ramadan seasons of the millennium, we should remember that human life, and not political interests, is sacred, and that all weapons of mass destruction -- including deadly economic sanctions -- are abominations in the eyes of God.
The people of Iraq, especially the children, are not our enemies. They must be allowed to live in peace and dignity. In the name of compassion, we must lift economic sanctions now.
NEW YORK (USA Today) Dec. 9, 1999 - Can moral Americans watch with indifference as 200 Iraqi children die each day due to the economic blockade imposed against their nation by the United Nations and, more directly, the United States? The Fellowship of Reconciliation, the world's oldest interfaith peace and justice organization, says, ''No!''
The terrible events of the 1990-91 Gulf War created a firestorm of mass destruction and death in Iraq. More than 100,000 Iraqi soldiers died in the conflict, while the coalition's air war destroyed or seriously damaged thousands of Iraqi electrical power stations, water treatment plants, grain fields, factories and food storage facilities far from the front lines. Iraq emerged from the war as a militarily defeated and economically decimated nation.
Severe international economic and military sanctions, imposed on Iraq since 1990, have continued the effects of the war. The military sanctions have ended Iraq's capacity to deploy biological, chemical and atomic weapons. But economic sanctions have impacted Iraqi civilians, resulting in catastrophic shortages of food, medicine, drinkable water and more.
Adequate food cannot be produced because Iraq lacks seeds, fertilizer, tractors and the electricity needed for irrigation equipment. Cities and towns are flooded with untreated waste and unsafe water. Medicine cannot be adequately distributed inside Iraq because of the lack of refrigerated storage facilities.
All of this adds up to the death each day of an estimated 200 Iraqi children under 5 years of age, an April 1998 UNICEF report found. These are not Republican Guard commanders, secret policemen, government officials or even members of Saddam Hussein's family. They are children.
While we celebrate the last Christmas, Hanukkah and Ramadan seasons of the millennium, we should remember that human life, and not political interests, is sacred, and that all weapons of mass destruction -- including deadly economic sanctions -- are abominations in the eyes of God.
The people of Iraq, especially the children, are not our enemies. They must be allowed to live in peace and dignity. In the name of compassion, we must lift economic sanctions now.
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