Voice for the Voiceless:

Children of the Genocide

by David M. Boje, Ph.D.

November 1, 2002

www.PeaceAware.com  

I would like to speak out against the genocide of children. I campaign against US sanctions that have caused more than 1.7 million deaths, including those of one million children. Sanctions have proved ineffective (Aenove & Ali Abunimah, 2000; Burns, 2002; Graham-Brown, 1999), yet the message given out by the mainstream media is sanctions are a humanitarian intervention by the US and UK.  Sanctions result in an increase of the violence to life.  The only reason they continue is because mainstream media refuses to show the American and British public what war really looks like. Instead the spectacle of fantasy presents war on Iraq as liberating and humanitarian. The heroic imagery of war is more real than the one million children sacrificed to the War Machine.

I want to share some facts in an unblaming manner that I hope will promote Peace Aware-ness of the genocide. I am not blaming any particular person, I do think the we have allowed the War Machine to take center stage in the spectacle.  I blame the unawareness of peace and life, not deliberate cruelty of particular people to children. The fault is with the War Machine. The War Machine presents the viewer with a false reality. Elections are a few days away and many politicians benefit from beating the drums of the War Machine.  The War Machine gives ratings to mainstream media corporations. The War Machine would have us all feel safe in a war fought far way.  The War Machine does not show us the horror. If it did the War Machine would halt.

The conditions of the Iraq children’s’ genocide are virtually unknown to most US and UK citizens. Most citizens can not imagine the agony and of watching children die, the pain being inflicted, the sorrow of  a mother’s and father’s heart as they watch innocent souls massacred, or the look of frustration of the doctor and nurse who could have saved the child if a ten cent tube or a two dollar medicine were not prohibited by sanction policy. What human being could stare into the eyes of a suffering child and advocate more sanctions?  I think these pictures melt the hardest heart into love and compassion. I think if these pictures were shown on Fox, CBS, NBC, or ABC there would not be sanctions against medicines, medical supplies, and war would have a human face.

WARNING: The photos that are in the next link are graphic and tragic, yet real. These are the faces of children that the War Machine spectacle of heroism will never be revealed to the mass consumers on prime time.  

CLICK HERE

Each of the situations would not have happened if sanctions were stopped

I  put up this slide show showing the photos affected by the sanctions. I was reading a passage from a Jain Monk Gurudev Shree Chitrabhanu who uses the expression "Voice for the For Voiceless" to develop awareness of cruelty in an unblaming manner. I wanted somehow to get at the images of the children in agony that are not being depicted on mainstream media. If people see the agony of children, will they think more seriously about sanctions?

For the slaughter of children to go on and on for 12 years of sanctions is unconscionable. This is genocide, and it is a violation of the 1949 Geneva Convention (see 1997 Protocol I) that says, “the starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is illegal and ethically indefensible.”  

Is it bombs that kill? Not just by bombs, but by germs that are preventable water-borne diseases such as typhoid and dysentery.  Bombs contribute; radioactive particles float across southern Iraq to toxify land and water that will kill the unborn.  The result is disease, radiation, and starvation of children as methods of war. Article 56 of the Geneva Convention Protocol prohibits methods of war that "may cause the release of dangerous forces... and consequent severe losses among the civilian population." Clearly the release of tons of depleted uranium over Iraq violates international law.  On Dec 4 1990 the US was the only nation of 144 to vote against a resolution to not bomb nuclear reactors. And on Jan 23 1991 General Colin Powell announced Iraq’s two nuclear reactors were destroyed, “They’re down. They’re finished” (NY Times, Jan 24, 1991: A11).

What causes the death of one million Iraq children? US and UK bombs and missiles wrecked Iraq’s water-purification plants in 1991 Dessert Storm, and again in 1998 Dessert Fox. Dropping depleted uranium on Iraq earth and water makes it toxic for generations.

Why? The long-term US and UK strategy is a form of germ warfare, the bombing of water-purification and sewage treatment plants and the embargo of any item that would stop the spread of disease (Tripp, 2002). This is biological warfare. The toxic pollution from depleted uranium bombs is nuclear warfare.

Why? Because the powers that be believe genocide will prompt a regime change in Iraq that will allow US and UK oil corporations to take over the world’s second largest oil reserves. Oil corporations are lobbying and financing US and UK leaders to genocide an entire country? There are economic reasons:

1.      Iraq oil reserve contracts are worth $1.1 trillion dollars.

2.      Iraq has 2^nd largest oil reserve in the world.

3.      Leading up to the Gulf War, US and UK sold state-of-the-art weapons of mass destruction to oil-rich Iraq (Phthian & Passas, 1996).

4.      US and UK economies depend upon more and more oil to keep the automobiles, especially all the guzzling SUVs running.

I would rather walk than see one child’s life taken for oil.

Is this war about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction? “During the seven years that U.N. weapons inspections took place in Iraq, Ritter and other inspectors confirmed that Saddam Hussein's chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons programs had been effectively destroyed. This fact undermines the Bush administration's false premise for waging war on Iraq” (Pitt & Ritter, 1996). To review, The 1991 Gulf War took out most weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the UN inspections took back any remainder, and then the 1998 Dessert Storm had only water-treatment plants to destroy. This means the 2002 War on Iraq by the US and UK only has one motive, oil.

How do the children die? They die through prolonged suffering, malnutrition and disease resulting from lack of medicine for treatable disease, sewage and nuclear-polluted drinking water, and malnourishment from lack of food.

Where is the evidence? The continued morbidity among Iraqi children is well documented. For example, Ascherio et al (1992) conducted a study of 1,076 Iraqi children, “768 of whom died during the period survey” between Jan 1, 1985 and Aug 31, 1991 (p. 931). The study, published in New England Journal of Medicine concluded “These results provide strong evidence that the Gulf war and trade sanctions caused a threefold increase in mortality among Iraqi children under five years of age. We estimate that an excess of more than 46,900 children died between January and August 1991” (Ascherio et al, 1992). United Nations Human Rights Committee reported that "the effect of sanctions and blockades has been to cause suffering and death in Iraq, especially to children" (as cited in Sutila, 2001: 1). Since the onset of trade sanctions, the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF, 2002a) reports the sanction trade embargos have caused 5,000 children under age 5 to die each month (Editorial, Seattle Times, Oct 1, 2000). One million Iraqi children die at a rate of 5,000 per month. UNICEF (2002) reports a five-fold increase in low birth weight (23.8% in 1998 versus 4.5% in 1990).  The statistics from UNICEF (2000) are as follows:

Table 1: Child Mortality Rates

The surveys were carried out between February-May 1999. “Between 1989 and 1999, the maternal mortality ratio in the south and center is 294 deaths per 100,000 live births.” (UNICEF, 2000).

            What items are banned by the sanctions trade embargo?

Source of Table (Simons, 1996).

Why? Why would any nation cause one million children to die over a 12-year period? Targeting water-purification plants and continued sanctions appear to be a long-term US and UK strategy for long term leverage.

There are positive steps government leaders can take to stop the sanctions. The steps leaders now propose would increase violence to life, the death of yet another million children in Iraq.  Some political leaders encourage sanctions to force a regime change. Is this policy effective? After 12 years of sanctions, one million children were sacrificed to sanctions that did not cause Saddam Hussein to become compassionate.

What is the real aim of sanctions? It is to kill children. Why would the US government want to kill 5,300 children each month? The real issue is to force a regime change through a policy of genocide. As the population of Iraq is reduced, US and UK oil corporations can install a new regime that has already agreed to grant them control over Iraq oil reserves.  Genocide requires a spectacle of mono-voiced narration.

How does the spectacle work? Mainstream media does not show the suffering of the children that results from the sanctions. The media presents Iraq war and continued sanctions as a liberatory strategy, a way to liberate Iraqi people form one man’s rule. All life is sacred and if the violence toward children were shown beside the spectacle, then this ware would be over. Most people only see and believe the spectacle of the mainstream media. The mainstream media spectacle makes the barbaric slaughter of 5,000 children each month invisible by substituting sanitized cartoonized images for reality. There are a multitude of books that present an alternative reading to the mainstream media spectacle (Alcalay et al, 1999; Graham-Brown, 1999; Kellner, 1992; Phthian & Passas, 1996; Pitt & Riter, 1996; Simons, 1996; Tripp, 2002).

1.      The cartoonized spectacle version of heroic war policy to save the Iraqi people does not hear from the voiceless starved and diseased children under age 5.

2.      The cartoonized spectacle of demonization of one person prevents the world from seeing the plight of 22 million people being sacrificed for oil.

3.      Targeting water-purification plants in 1991 and 1998 bombings allows the US & UK to blame Saddam Hussein for the deaths of one million Iraqi children.

4.      The spectacle of State propaganda demonizes one man to legitimate the genocide of one million voiceless children to date. The state claims to be “putting the squeeze on Saddam Hussein” (Seattle Times editorial, Oct 1, 2000).

5.      The spectacle of heroic war against the great demon, takes our attention off the voiceless children who pay the price.

Conclusions

What is the result of the slaughter of 5,000 children each month these past 12 years?  It has strengthened Hussein’s grip on Iraq.  The Middle East is kept in a state of instability, as a strategy to give oil corporations in the UK and US a way to reassert dominance over the Iraq oil reserves.  The root cause of this is the over-dependency of UK and US economies upon oil, the depletion of oil reserves in the world, which makes Iraq’s $1.1 trillion reserves too lucrative to pass up. Therefore one million children are sacrificed in a 12-year genocide in order to pressure a regime change.  Three US presidents (Bush Sr., Clinton, & Bush Jr.) have lead the charge. The oil corporate lobby finances the election of US presidents, oil men and oil women staff the administration, oil corporate executives write US energy policy, oil empire sets the agenda for foreign policy, and our current president is an oil man. It is time to name the sanction policy for what it is: genocide for oil.  It is time for Ahimsa, non-violence to all life. It is time to turn off the War Machine and become Peace-Aware (www.PeaceAware.com).

References

Alcalay, Glenn et al (1999). Depleted Uranium: How the Pentagon Radiates Soldiers & Civilians with DU Weapons. Second Edition. Excerpts http://www.iacenter.org/depleted/mettoc.htm

Aenove, Anthony & Ali Abunimah, Eds (2000). Iraq Under Siege: The Deadly Impact of Sanctions and War. South End Pr; ISBN: 0896086194

Ascherio, Alberto, Robert Chase, Time Cote, Godelieave Dehaes, Eric Hoskins, Jilali Laaouej, Megan Passey, Seleh Qaderi, Saher Shuqaidef, Mary C. Smith, & Sarah Zaidi (1992). Effect of the Gulf War on Infant and Child Mortality in Iraq. The New England Journal of Medicine. Vol. 327 (13): 931-936.

Burns, John F. (2002). 12 Americans Stage Protest. New York Times. October 27. p. 8.

Graham-Brown, Sarah (1999). Sanctioning Saddam: The Politics of Intervention in Iraq. I B Tauris & Co Ltd; ISBN: 1860644732

Kellner, Douglas (1992). The Persian Gulf TV War. Westview Press.

Phthian, Mark & Nikos Passas (1996). Arming Iraq: How the U.S. and Britain Secretly Built Saddam's War Machine (Northeastern Series in Transnational Crime). Northeastern University Press; ISBN: 1555532853.

Pitt, William Rivers and former UN Sanctions Inspector, Scott Ritter (1996). War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You To Know. Context Books; ISBN: 1893956385.

Simons, Geoff (1996). The Scourging of Iraq: Sanctions, Law and Natural Justice. NY: St. Martins Press.

Sutila, Tamara (2001).  Report: ‘Iraq’s Children, A lost generation.’ May. http://www.scn.org/ccpi/UnicefMay2001.html

Tripp, Charles (2002). A History of Iraq. Cambridge University Press. ISBN: 052152900X; 2nd edition (May 2002)

UNICEF (2000). UNICEF Iraq Child and Maternal Mortality Surveys, 232 July. http://www.unicef.org.uk/news/Iraq1.htm

UNICEF (2002) Research and Evaluation of Iraq children morbidity. http://www.unicef.org/reseval/iraqr.html See also http://www.irak.be/ned/archief/UNICEF/SITANIRAQSumm.doc