Genocide, weapons of mass destruction, starvation, terrorism, the United Nations and Saddam Hussein: along with these topics Monday night’s “discussion” on Iraqi sanctions had a true conflict of opinions, did it?
The component of conflict is rare in forums on social-justice issues. A conference or meeting is often set up by people who want to bring a certain injustice to light. In order to convince skeptics, they want to show how their views stack up to conventional thinking, so they hold a debate-but a debate with an intended end. It is effective and beneficial to the goal. But in the basement of the College Church, there was all-out battle. But was there really a conflict in opinion?
On either side of moderator Lawrence Biondi, S.J. sat Laurie Mylroie PhD and Hans-C. Graf Sponeck. Their discussion was on the validity of continuing the United Nations’ economic sanctions in Iraq. Mylorie is a noted political scientist who graduated from Harvard, advised Bill Clinton on Iraqi issues during his 1992 campaign and has written two books on Saddam Hussein and his terrorist tendencies, one of which landed on top at the New York Times bestseller list.
Sponeck formerly worked with the United Nations, including posts in Ghana, Sierra Leone, Pakistan, Turkey and Botswana. In 1998, he became the U.N. Assistant Secretary General and Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq and was the director of the Oil-For-Food Humanitarian Program.
He is also a noted author on development and social change. Just recently, he resigned from the United Nations under protest to its handling of the sanctions and its effect on the people of Iraq.
While both could be considered intellectuals and experts, that was where the similarities ended. Mylroie started off the main event, and she gave a basic speech on U.S. foreign policy concerning Iraq. Her main point: Saddam Hussein is powerful. He is getting stronger. He is waging a war against the United States. She continuously quoted theories of Hussein’s involvement in pretty much every terrorist act that has taken place against the United States in the last seven years.
She spouted theories connecting the bombers of the World Trade Center to Hussein. She linked a plan to blow up the United Nations to Hussein. By the time she was done, I was afraid that Hussein was on the roof waiting to blow us all away.
She claimed that Iraq was 35 pounds of uranium away from having nuclear capability, and that they had four tons of deadly chemical goo. She explained the danger of anthrax on the population of major cities. All of us were properly afraid. She closed her argument by stating that if sanctions are removed, then Saddam will only be stronger and that will be deadly.
Sponeck spoke from a totally different perspective. He painted a picture of what Iraq was now. Unemployment rates have easily reached 60 to 75 percent. It has become a society that is living for the next handout.
There has been no new housing built since 1990, yet the population continues to rise, bringing on significant increases in domestic abuse and disease. In some cases, apartments have a “12-hour” policy, where a family will stay in the apartment for half a day and then move on while someone else moves in. Yet, at current rates, a shrinking population is the main concern. Every year, 50,000 children under the age of five, die. That does not include the 7-year-olds, or the elderly, or the people with diabetes, or the people who are maimed by the continuing 10-year war.
Sponeck made his point clear. It is not time to mess with theories or paranoia; it is time to save some lives. People are dying at genocidal rates. And yet the United States and the United Nations stick by their policy of sanctions, despite the fact that Saddam has shown no intention to bow to them. The only thing that the sanctions have succeeded in is the crippling of a nation.
This point must stand out as superior. Mylorie gave a speech that has always worked for her. Talk to Americans about what Saddam might be doing, or what he might have done, and they will follow you anywhere. Kill a million people? Fine. Do it. Wipe out a generation? Show us how. The fact is that her argument is based on assumptions, guesses and theories. And many of them don’t stand up.
The only firm evidence of non conventional weapons Mylorie gave drew from the defection of Saddam’s brother-in-law, who ran the non conventional weapons development program. She bombarded us with information on how many weapons Iraq has developed during the last 10 years. This is, of course, the period when the sanctions have been in place.
The sanctions have not hurt Saddam’s development; they hurt the population, which has nothing to do with the weapons. That point alone is valid, but the argument crumbles in the face of U.N. testimony. Sponeck, who has actually been to Iraq and who has worked with weapons inspectors quoted chief arms inspectors, disarmament chairmen and even William Cohen to assure us that Saddam Hussein is not a threat to his neighbors-much less to the United States.
Mylorie’s paranoid argument was based on the idea that Iraq equals Saddam. She never referred to the nation as “the people of Iraq” but always as “Saddam Hussein.” In her political science mentality, she could not see beyond the government of Iraq. In a conference that was about THE PEOPLE of Iraq, she never once mentioned them. It was only Saddam and how he is a mad man.
This was the main fault of Mylorie’s argument. The plight of the people is not connected to the plight of Saddam. The people are unable to bind together in a revolutionary force because the destruction of the infrastructure does not allow them to come together in a literal, physical sense. The United States undermines all attempts to resurrect a communications grid, preventing different parts of the country to communicate, preventing cohesion for a force of revolution. Finally, if you are working daily just to eat and survive, the last thing you are thinking about is meeting and organizing a coup against one of the world’s most organized and efficient governments.
So if there are no more weapons, and the people are not weakening Saddam’s rule, then why are we sacrificing thousands of people to them?
This option has played itself out and failed. We can no longer ignore the Iraqi people. They are not the ruthless terrorists that some paint Hussein to be, as many Iraqi-Americans in the crowd pointed out. They are the remnants of a civil and advanced society. In fact, the largest health threat to Iraqi children prior to 1991 was obesity. Now it is malnutrition and starvation, leading in a 160-percent increase in the child mortality rate.
It is these facts that we must begin to focus on. Death in these proportions was condemned by the Allies after World War II and by Europe during the conflict in Bosnia and Yugoslavia. The standard must stay true for this situation.
During the next two weeks, I will focus on two of the biggest myths that surround the American perspective toward Iraq. It will point out fundamental flaws in our belief system that we apply to the situation, and the way we look at the Oil-For-Food Program, and about the No-Fly Zones that are currently being enforced over Iraqi air space.
In the end, I will prove that we are approaching Iraq with a deadly resolve to beat problems that aren’t there. It is costing lives, and preserving those lives is the goal which the United Nations is to carry with it into every meeting, but which often get left at the negotiating door.
