Robert Jensen
Department of Journalism
University of Texas
Austin, TX 78712
work: (512) 471-1990
fax: (512) 471-7979
rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu
copyright Robert Jensen 1999
an edited version of this ran in the Dallas Morning News, August 27, 1999, p. 29A.
By Robert Jensen
If only all the world had the conscience of a 7-year-old.
For the past two years I have been organizing and speaking out against
the war on Iraq that the United States is waging through bombing and economic
sanctions. One recent Sunday morning, a colleague and I spoke to a local
group
and appeared on cable access television about the issue. My 7-year-old
son, Luke, sat through both appearances, seemingly more interested in his
toys than in three hours of talk about the viciousness of U.S. foreign
policy.
But over dinner that night, he started quizzing me about the issue, and it was clear he had been listening.
In the talk, we had explained that nine years of sanctions had crippled
the Iraqi economy and were directly responsible for as many as 1 million
civilian deaths from malnutrition and disease. On the heels of the devastation
of
Iraq’s health, sanitation and education infrastructure in the 1991
Gulf War, the sanctions were inducing deep poverty and preventing the rebuilding
of the country.
Although the U.S. government contends the brutal embargo is in place
to force Iraq to comply with weapons inspections, with perhaps the added
goal of forcing the Iraqi people to overthrow the Hussein regime, the sanctions’
main mission is to send a message to the rest of the world: This is
what happens when a country defies the United Stateswe will destroy you.
The U.S. right to dominate the resources of the Middle East, and the rest
of the
world, cannot be challenged.
In 1996 when interviewed on “60 Minutes,” Madeline Albright then
ambassador to the United Nations and now secretary of state was asked
if the deaths of a half-million children in Iraq were an acceptable price
to
pay for a policy. “I think this is a very hard choice,” Albright acknowledged,
“but the price -- we think the price is worth it.”
It is difficult to imagine any policy that is worth the deaths of a half-million children. That those children have died simply to shore up U.S. power is a crime against humanity that is impossible to justify.
If only government officials had the conscience of a 7-year-old.
At dinner, Luke asked questions. He’s going to a “normal” public school, where kids are trained to think the U.S. government doesn’t kill innocent people. He wants to believe what he is being taught about U.S. benevolence around the world, but he is willing to reject the mythology in light of the facts.
Is the leader of Iraq good? he asked. No, I explained, he is a bad guy
who sometimes even hurts his own people, but that doesn’t mean the people
should suffer even more under sanctions. Why don’t the Iraqis get rid of
him? he
asked. That’s complicated, I said, but right now the people of Iraq
spend most of their time trying to stay alive and aren’t in a very good
position to overthrow a government.
How do sanctions work? Why don’t other countries just sell Iraq things
that they need? I explained that most of the world would like to see the
sanctions lifted, but that the United States has more guns and power than
anyone else,
and so the United States generally gets what it wants.
Why don’t the people in Iraq just come and live here? he asked. When
I told him that wasn’t possible, he asked if we could send some food and
toys to Iraq. I said that the postal service wouldn’t let us mail anything
of value
to Iraq, but that a group in Chicago called Voices in the Wilderness
made trips to Iraq and delivered medicine. It would be better to send Voices
a donation, I said.
“That’s it,” Luke said. He ran to get his wallet and emptied out a 10-dollar
bill and some coins. “I want to send it all to those people who are helping,”
he said. I told Luke that he didn’t have to donate all his money, that
it
would be OK to give just some of what he had. But his mind was made
up. He gathered together a few small toys to include in the package with
the donation, dictated a letter, and drew a picture of himself so that
the Voices
folks would know who sent it.
I hesitated for a moment: Because Voices in the Wilderness has not sought
a license from the U.S. government to take humanitarian supplies to Iraq,
the group has been threatened with $163,000 in fines. Technically, Luke
could be
liable for contributing to that “crime,” though I expect the Clinton
administration is not so vindictive that they would prosecute elementary-school
kids.
Luke’s unprompted offer to help was particularly uplifting for me. At
protests and talks for the past two years I have been listening to adults
who tell me that they don’t care about the fate of Iraqis and that they
hope that the
sanctions squeeze them until Hussein is out, no matter how many innocent
people die. Once while at a political event holding up a banner that read,
“1 million dead from sanctions -- how many will be enough?” a man walked
by
me, smirked, and said, “I don’t know -- how about 2 million?”
If only all Americans had the conscience of a 7-year-old.
Robert Jensen is a professor of journalism at the University of Texas
and a member of the Nowar Collective. He can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu.