Iraq sanctions complicate terrorism fight
By William E. DeMars

Iraq has been singled out for special treatment by the United States, and Saddam Hussein is not going to like it.  Iraq is not only part of the "axis of evil"--President Bush's short list of regimes that most threaten America.  Unlike Iran and North Korea, Iraq is the next target for U.S. military action.

Saddam Hussein has pursued building nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, and the Bush administration intends to throw him out of power before he has the chance to give such weapons to terrorists.  We should expect to see military action within a year using a combination of Iraqi opposition groups, U.S. special forces and air power, and regional allies.

Yet Iraq poses another complication for the war on terrorism, whether Saddam Hussein goes or stays.  U.N. economic sanctions against Iraq, which the United States kept in place for more than a decade, have been devastating in their effects on Iraqi civilians.  The end of sanctions is necessary for the legitimacy of the global war on terrorism.  But the manner in which they end is also crucial.

The impact of sanctions on Iraq has been documented meticulously by several United Nations and non-governmental physician groups.  There is little argument over their conclusions.  By hindering the import of medical supplies, depressing the economy and preventing the rebuilding of water treatment infrastructure damaged by Gulf War bombing, sanctions have increased the death rate for children under 5 years of a cumulative tool of half a million children.  For Iraqis of all ages, sanctions have exacerbated disease and malnutrition to cause, so far, a million deaths.

Before Sept. 11, these actions were a humanitarian disaster; since Sept 11 they have become a growing liability for American national interests.  As the United States rallies the world to prevent terrorist attacks against civilians, the plight of Iraqi civilians caught between Saddam Hussein and the U.S.-led sanctions stands out as a glaring inconsistency.  Even discounting for the inherent messiness and hypocrisy of international politics, the sanctions call into question the credibility of President Bush's claim that "our cause is just."

Or course, Saddam Hussein is chiefly responsible for the impact of sanctions, by invading Kuwait, refusing to give up his weapons of mass destructions as required by the U.N. Security Council resolutions after the Gulf War, and manipulating the sanctions economy to prop up his regime at the expense of the poor.  Nevertheless, the moral complicity of the United States has grown as the humanitarian impact of sanctions became well-known in the mid-1990s, and particularly after U.N. weaspons inspections ended in late 1998.

Economic sanctions appeal to some who view them as a "nonviolent alternative" to war.  But this is truly only in the most abstract, legal sense.  On the ground where people live, sanctions impoverish the most vunerable, and kill the poor.  Promising theoretical work has been done on "smart sanctions" that would target political and economic elites and spare the poor, but the historical record displays only stupid sanctions that fall on the weakest.  In practice, sanctions are a form of warfare.

The "sanctions of war" on Iraq fits the pattern of other wars that Saddam has initiated or provoked: against Iraqi Kurds in the north and Shiites in the south, against neighbors Iran and Kuwait, and the Gulf War against the U.S.-led coalition.  The common thread is this: Saddam Hussein starts wars that kill Muslims, well over 2 million so far.  It is deeply ironic that neither human rights groups nor Islamic militants have identified Saddam Hussein as the chief threat in the world today to the human rights of Muslims.

But simply ending sanctions will not repair the political damage to the United States.  The Bush administration must find a way to dissociate itself from the fruitless and never-ending sanctions.  In any military campaign to overthrow the regime in Baghdad, Iraqi, Arab and Muslim allies of the United States should make the end of sanctions as explicit war aim, and claim responsibility, publicly and vociferously, for acting to remove Saddam Hussein as a scourge on the Muslim world.

For American national interests, economic sanctions against Iraq are a liability that became much heavier after Sept. 11.  Whether or not Saddam remains in power, America must disentangle itself from sanction that kill Iraqi civilians, in order to legitimize the global war against terrorism.

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Dr. DeMars is chairman of the government department at Wofford College in Spartanburg, SC.