From: Pat Fallon (pfallon@ptd.net)
Date: Wed Sep 18 2002 - 14:02:03 MDT
<<Pat Fallon>>
<<Libertarians have for years warned that our interventionist foreign policy
breeds enemies world wide. In the past, with 2 wide oceans and friendly
neighbors north and south, we Americans could go about our lives in blissful
ignorance, while, for example, our CIA overthrew the popularly supported
Prime Minister of Iran and helped install and prop up a dictatorial shah for
over 25 years. But eventually that caught up with us. Iranians overthrew the
shah, sacked our embassy, and took US hostages. Anyone seeking to understand
that terrorist incident and avoid future ones would be missing quite a lot
if he didn't consider our intervention in their domestic affairs.>>
<Spudboy100>
<This means you buy in to the figure stated by L. Stahl, whose is and whose
sources are leftist-statist liberals. You believe such sources to be
accurate in this matter?>
To avoid confusion, I'd like to point out that my paragraph you reproduced
to has no references to figures quoted by Leslie Stahl. It has to do with
one example of how our government has pursued an interventionist foreign
policy, such as overthrowing the Prime Minister of Iran and installing and
propping up a brutal dictator for 20 years. One of many examples of "regime
change" our state has engineered in the past; meddling in the internal
affairs of other countries and making us the target of later terrorist acts
like the seizure of our embassy once the Shah was finally overthrown.
My comments which mentioned Leslie Stahl was from Sixty Minutes, May 12,
1996:
<<Leslie Stahl: "We have heard that a half million children have died (as a
result of sanctions against Iraq). I mean, that is more children than died
in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?"
Madeleine Albright: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price, we
think the price is worth it.">>
<Spudboy100>
<This means you buy in to the figure stated by L. Stahl, whose is and whose
sources are leftist-statist liberals. You believe such sources to be
accurate in this matter?>
When asked point blank on prime time TV about the death of 500,000 children
in Iraq, the then Secretary of State did not dispute the figure, nor did she
dispute the tactic of targeting innocent populations to achieve political
goals. She said of the reported death of a half million children "..the
price is worth it."
Do I think the 500,000 figure was accurate? No. But the figure I do give
more credibility to is bad enough [1].
In addition, I think there is evidence that the U.S. government
intentionally used sanctions against Iraq to degrade the country's water
supply after the Gulf War. The United States knew the cost that civilian
Iraqis, mostly children, would pay, and it went ahead anyway. [2]
Furthermore, Madeleine Albright declared in March 1997 that the U.S. would
veto any U.N. Security Council efforts to lift sanctions, even if Iraq
finally came into full compliance with U.N. Security Council resolutions;
only if Saddam Hussein no longer ruled Iraq would the U.S. allow the
sanctions regime to end. President Clinton reiterated this position in
November 1997. Current President Bush is even more adamant. All along it
didn't matter if they complied with the sanctions, we want a regime change
[and maybe all that cool oil].
These sanctions have proven to be a slow motion Weapon of Mass Destruction
against mostly children.
And, while our media is usually a Weapon of Mass Distortion, I'm afraid that
60 Minutes accurately reflected the face of American arrogance for all the
Middle East [and anyone watching] to see. An embargo that would kill a half
million Iraqi children would be, in the words of our Secretary of State,
"worth it". Overthrow a Prime Minister and install and prop up a ruthless
dictator... hey, it helped our oil companies, didn't it? Go to war for
Kuwaiti and Saudi Arabia? No problem. Plenty of US tax dollars and kids to
spend making the world safe for Emirs and Princelings, and risky foreign
investments for Big US Oil.
<Turning inward via a isolationist foreign policy...>
The old bogosity that a "non-interventionist" foreign policy means
"isolationist," arises anew. Most libertarians, however, are not
"isolationists" but, rather, what we might call 'defensivists.' They hold
that military or any other physical force must be defensive, or at most
retaliatory, but never offensive and intrusive. The military of a free
country should be duty bound to defend it; not roam the world, toppling
governments, installing "friendly" dictators, defending foreign monarchs,
forcing American taxpayers to fork over $4 Billion [or whatever] a year to
Israel and $2 Billion to Egypt, etc.
A libertarian government would not intervene in the affairs of other nations
in a military fashion. Likewise, a libertarian government would not
interfere if some of its citizens, as individuals or groups, voluntarily
supported an overseas war. Non-interventionism is a policy of
non-aggression, not only toward other nations, but toward a governments' own
citizenry. Government intervention in foreign affairs invariably starts with
the imposition of taxes and regulations on its own citizenry.
A libertarian, non-interventionist foreign policy would not impose duties,
tariffs, or embargoes on trading between its citizenry and that of other
nations.
Contrast that with what is apparently your view, that embargoes and
sanctions should be enforced to cut off trade with people whose governments
we would like to see changed more to our liking.
Which one is the "isolationist"?
Increased interventionism overseas will just feed into the cycle of violence
that brought us the worst terrorist incident to-date. As Ivan Eland
concluded after his survey of 20th Century terrorism, "The extensive number
of incidents of terrorism linked to U.S. foreign policy implies that the
United States could substantially reduce the chance of catastrophic
terrorist attacks if it lowered its military profile overseas."
That's a fancy way of saying that we can reduce America's attractiveness as
a target by minding our own business.
I know of no way to absolutely prevent acts of terror against America --
more so when the perpetrators are willing to sacrifice their own lives in
order to murder others. But if we want to reduce the likelihood of such
incidents, we need to steer clear of other people's conflicts.
Two hundred years ago, in his first inaugural address, Thomas Jefferson
urged Americans to pursue "peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all
nations, --entangling alliances with none."
Today, you might deride Jefferson as an isolationist. But to ignore his
advice doesn't just spurn the wisdom of one of one of the nation's founders.
Entangling alliances -- intervention in other people's battles -- have a
price measured in blood.
"We can have a republic - a government strictly limited by the Constitution
and the rule of law. Or an empire; that is, a lawless, often ruthless, and
stupid giant of a nation, like a very large child lumbering carelessly
across the global landscape, until it gets careless and inevitably stumbles
and falls. How many will be crushed beneath its gargantuan weight?"[3]
Pat Fallon
Notes------------------------------------------------
[1] One source I have seen that seem to be reasonable assessments of the
situation is THE EFFECT OF IRAQI SANCTIONS: STATISTICAL PITFALLS AND
RESPONSIBILITY by Amatzia Baram which appeared in The Middle East Journal ,
Volume 54, Number 2, Spring 2000
[http://www.mideasti.org/articles/baram.html]; which concludes:
"This means that, on average, between August 1990 and March 1998, every
month saw deaths as a result of the embargo of around 1850 children under
five. This means that, on the average, every day more than 60 children
died. This is a horrendous toll and there has been no need to inflate it to
12,000 or 6,000, or 5,000 a month in the way the Iraqi regime has done, and
damaging in the process its own credibility, and that of the humanitarian
organizations."
Another sober assessment I have read is "The Politics of Dead Children, Have
sanctions against Iraq murdered millions?" By Matt Welch, Reason Magazine
March 2002 [http://reason.com/0203/fe.mw.the.shtml]. The author of this
article cites the work of Richard Garfield's. Garfields 1999 report -- which
included a logistic regression analysis that re-examined four previously
published child mortality surveys and added bits from 75 or so other
relevant studies -- picked apart the faulty methodologies of his
predecessors, criticized the bogus claims of the anti-sanctions left,
admitted when the data were shaky, and generally used conservative numbers.
Ultimately, Garfield argued, sanctions played an undeniably important role.
"Even a small number of documentable excess deaths is an expression of a
humanitarian disaster, and this number is not small," he concluded. "[And]
excess deaths should...be seen as the tip of the iceberg among damages to
occur among under five-year-olds in Iraq in the 1990s....The humanitarian
disaster which has occurred in Iraq far exceeds what may be any reasonable
level of acceptable damages according to the principles of discrimination
and proportionality used in warfare...."
[2] From http://www.swans.com/library/art7/jlind002.html :
Several United States Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) documents clearly
and thoroughly prove, in the words of one author, "beyond a doubt that,
contrary to the Geneva Convention, the U.S. government intentionally used
sanctions against Iraq to degrade the country's water supply after the Gulf
War. The United States knew the cost that civilian Iraqis, mostly children,
would pay, and it went ahead anyway" (The Progressive, August 2001).
One document entitled "Iraq Water Treatment Vulnerabilities," dated January
22, 1991, is quite straightforward in how sanctions will prevent Iraq from
supplying clean water to its citizens. It begins, "Iraq depends on importing
specialized equipment and some chemicals to purify its water supply, most of
which is heavily mineralized and frequently brackish to saline. With no
domestic sources of both water treatment replacement parts and some
essential chemicals, Iraq will continue attempts to circumvent United
Nations Sanctions to import these vital commodities. Failing to secure
supplies will result in a shortage of pure drinking water for much of the
population. This could lead to increased incidences, if not epidemics, of
disease." The document later continues, "Iraq could try convincing the
United Nations or individual countries to exempt water treatment supplies
from sanctions for humanitarian reasons. It probably also is attempting to
purchase supplies by using some sympathetic countries as fronts. If such
attempts fail, Iraqi alternatives are not adequate for their national
requirements" (U.S. Department of Defense, January 1991).
Other DIA documents confirm that the U.S. government was not only aware of
the devastation of the sanctions, but was, in fact, monitoring their
progress. The first in a lengthy series of documents entitled "Disease
Information" is a document whose heading reads "Subject: Effects of Bombing
on Disease Occurrence in Baghdad." The document states, "Increased incidence
of diseases will be attributable to degradation of normal preventive
medicine, waste disposal, water purification/distribution, electricity, and
decreased ability to control disease outbreaks. Any urban area in Iraq that
has received infrastructure damage will have similar problems." The document
then itemizes the likely disease outbreaks, noting which in particular will
affect children (U.S Department of Defense, January 1991).
A second DIA document, "Disease Outbreaks in Iraq" from February 21, 1991
writes, "Conditions are favorable for communicable disease outbreaks,
particularly in major urban areas affected by coalition bombing." It
continues, "Infectious disease prevalence in major Iraqi urban areas
targeted by coalition bombing (Baghdad, Basrah) undoubtedly has increased
since the beginning of Desert Storm... Current public health problems are
attributable to the reduction of normal preventive medicine, waste disposal,
water purification and distribution, electricity, and the decreased ability
to control disease outbreaks." Similar to the preceding document, it
itemizes the likely outbreaks, paying close attention to which will affect
children (U.S. Department of Defense, February 1991).
The third document, written March 15, 1991 and entitled "Medical Problems in
Iraq," states, "Communicable diseases in Baghdad are more widespread than
usually observed during this time of the year and are linked to the poor
sanitary conditions (contaminated water supplied and improper sewage
disposal) resulting from the war. According to a United Nations children's
Fund (UNICEF) / World Health Organization report, the quantity of potable
water is less than 5 percent of the original supply, there are no
operational water and sewage treatment plants, and the reported incidence of
diarrhea is four times above normal levels. Additionally, respiratory
infections are on the rise. Children particularly have been affected by
these diseases" (U.S. Department of Defense, March 1991).
"As these documents illustrate, the United State knew sanctions had the
capacity to devastate the water treatment system of Iraq. It knew what the
consequences would be: increased outbreaks of disease and high rates of
child mortality"
[3]quoting Justin Raimondo
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