The Sanctions Dilemma
Lopez, George A.
the United States the one nation not subject to international law. This is indefensible and absurd, as serious people in Washington surely see. The affair has actually...
...Why are intermarriage rates so low in some dioceses, and so high in others...
...First, it is Baghdad itself that has stifled the UN-sanctioned, humanitarian oil-for-food program from its inception in 1991, holding innocent Iraqis hostage as the world community continually tried to get medicine and food relief into the country...
...What is essential is the truth, and in my view, nothing could be more insulting to the prayer and fasting of faithful people trying to eliminate devastating sanctions, nor as dehumanizing to Iraqis themselves, as consciously employing incorrect data because of a belief that higher casualty numbers might mobilize more people to work against sanctions...
...From the start, Iraqi officials complained that the enlarged relief effort would lead to further UN intrusion into their country's affairs...
...Our quandary can be summed up in two questions: How do we deal with evil leaders in an effective and humane manner...
...But to be less vigilant at controlling these weapons in the tough cases like Iraq now because general disarmament is the more appropriate goal, costs the international community the moral leverage needed to motivate other, less aggressive producer states to voluntarily control their own weapons...
...Instead, the Iraqi government marshaled its resources to construct dozens of "palaces," erect monuments to its own glorification, and attempt to rebuild its vast military appaCommonweal | | September11, 1998 ratus (including efforts to smuggle military technology and circumvent restrictions on weapons of mass destruction...
...The same should hold for other weapons of mass destruction...
...For while there is no question that children in Iraq have died from treatable diseases and afflictions, we must also ask whether the Iraqi government's own policies actually attend to its people's needs...
...I, too, am convinced that the sanctions policy can and should have been managed more effectively and humanely...
...As various analysts have documented, the sanctions imposed after the Gulf War created widespread unemployment, skyrocketing inflation, and severe shortages of previously imported commodities, including medicines, medical equipment, farm machinery, electrical generating equipment, and water purification supplies...
...As an analyst of the humanitarian impact of the Iraqi sanctions, and as a supporter of Pax Christi, I share the hope that not one more Iraqi will die a preventable death...
...Its main opponents in this matter are its principal allies, Canada, Germany, and Britain...
...typhoid spread alarmingly...
...Cholera, scarcely detected in the 1980s, reemerged at near-epidemic levels...
...In addition, Baghdad undertook a massive civil engineering project, and a military campaign against the marsh Arabs of southern Iraq through 1994, rather than address the needs of the general population...
...In the case of Iraq, the moral ground continues to rest with sanctions...
...Embedded in this disagreement over sanctions are excruciating ethical issues that Catholic peace circles have not sufficiently addressed...
...United Nations human rights agencies have cited Baghdad as the world's leader in the "disappearing" of political opponents: more than sixteen thousand...
...It should not be difficult to consider the possibility that a leader who despises various other peoples to the point of waging aggressive war on them, might also use his own citizen-children as negotiating pawns to end sanctions, while maintaining the mechanisms he has set in place to build weapons of mass destruction...
...52 percent in Lafayette, Indiana...
...9 Third, there is the question of whether the international community's actions in the area of humanitarian relief parallel its rightful concern over weapons development...
...One final point may be in order...
...he United States and its allies bear some responsibility because of their inability or unwillingness to ease sanctions in response to early Iraqi concessions...
...Faced with Saddam's intransigence on both weapons inspections and humanitarian relief efforts, the Security Council, though resolute on maintaining sanctions, was fairly unimaginative in executing an effective sanctions policy...
...Some dioceses, such as Brownsville, Texas (6 percent), Newark, New Jersey (16 percent), and Providence, Rhode Island (17 percent) are well below the national average...
...This argument sees Iraq as the victim of a double standard, noting that Israel's nuclear weapons do not subject Israelis to similar recriminations, and pointing to weapons held by other powerful but unsanctioned states as indicative of Western inconsistency and a bias against Iraq...
...If we acknowledge that elements of the sanctions policy have been both ineffective and inhumane, why not simply accept lifting the sanctions...
...Iraq's responsibility is compounded by its refusal to participate fully in the implementation of the various Security Council proposals to supply food, medicine and relief supplies...
...Second, there is Commonweal | 0 September 11, 1998 the continued persecution of the Iraqi people by Saddam Hussein himself...
...A related claim for lifting the sanctions takes the form of a "moral equivalency" argument...
...They are less likely to agree with canon law on matters such as the need to attend Mass and to limit ordination to celibate males...
...The most probable numbers of excess deaths which might be attributed to sanctions for the period 1990-97 are about 500,000...
...It's no wonder that diocesan and parish leaders encourage Catholics to marry Catholics and to avoid interfaith marriage...
...Sanctions have gone awry because the Council did not mix carrots (such as the partial lifting of sanctions as rewards) with sticks (keeping sanctions on the free flow of oil) in attempting to close down Iraq's weapons development...
...It was designed to persuade policy makers to end the comprehensive trade sanctions against Iraq...
...The recent refusal to permit inspections comes on the heels of UNSCOM's director indicating that if this round of inspections had gone smoothly, Iraq would soon meet conditions necessary to remove sanctions...
...Sanction critics, then, do not acknowledge this important ethical argument: that the international community has a moral obligation to insure that Kurdish children, Saudi children, Israeli children, Unites States children, and Iraqis themselves not be gassed or poisoned by Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, and that this obligation is at least equal to the obligation to ensure life for Iraqi children...
...Every steadfast effort to denuclearize the Middle East should be pursued...
...The mortality rate for children under five has more than doubled the pre-1990 period, meaning that within that halfa-million figure, about 289,000 excess child deaths have occurred...
...In particular, the Council failed to see in the multiple requirements placed on Iraq after the Gulf War an opportunity to mix pressure, pain, and promises in ways that might have sparked more compliance, and which would have rewarded the real progress made on Iraq's compliance with various provisions important to the Council...
...The affair has actually undermined Washington's claim to defend world order and lead the world community...
...Thus, all other things being equal (for example, the quality of parish-based Commonweal | 2 September 11, 1998...
...The Iraqi sanctions debate raises profound issues about ethics and international policy...
...The impact of the sanctions may be either immoral or moral but judgments regarding their effect on innocent people must be assessed clearly by examining the response of the sanctioned country's leader and in light of the international relief effort mobilized on behalf of the innocent...
...Specifically, there was neither new bargaining over sanctions, nor "trial balloons" about lifting some of the trade sanctions when Iraq accepted two major provisions of the Security Council resolutions: the creation of permanent UN monitoring facilities in November 1993, and the unqualified recognition of Kuwait's borders and sovereignty...
...This is an unacceptable tragedy...
...Still, a justification for the continuation of sanctions does not mean that their humanitarian impact must be accepted as an unintended consequence of furthering the moral good of controlling weapons of mass destruction...
...Several years ago, sociologist Peter Blau showed that members of small groups have many opportunities to interact with members of large groups...
...But others are far above it.The intermarriage rate is 43 percent in Portland, Oregon...
...and the stunting and wasting of children became widespread...
...members of large groups have relatively few opportunities to interact with members of small groups...
...Those who claim that the Catholic "consistent life ethic" demands an end to sanctions often do not acknowledge the reality of Saddam's own perverse antilife ethic...
...and 71 percent in Burlington, Vermont...
...They also are less likely to register in parishes, attend Mass, and pray privately...
...The vigil follows years of activity by Voices, including civil disobedience in the form of delivery of relief supplies to Iraq...
...They are the authors of "Trouble in the Gulf: Pain and Promise," the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (May~June, 1998...
...With David Cortright he has written extensively on sanctions, including reports to relevant UN agencies on the humanitarian impact of sanctions...
...9 1998, Los Angeles Times Syndicate George A. Lopez THE SANCTIONS DILEMMA Hype doesn't help O n July 25, members of Voices in the Wilderness and Pax Christi began a three-week fast and lobbying effort outside the United States Mission to the United Nations...
...As the UN Secretary General's November 1997 report observed: "The rate of acute malnutrition or wasting among children up to five years old was 11 percent, chronic malnutrition, which results in stunting, affected 31 percent, and 26 percent were underweight...
...And it has also retained access to some of its overseas financial assets, and to equipment and resources looted from Kuwait...
...they insisted that only a complete lifting of sanctions could adequately address the country's humanitarian and economic development needs...
...George A. Lopez is director of the undergraduate peace concentration at the Joan B. Kroc Institute of International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame...
...Without question, sanctions have been instrumental, although not singular, in attaining the major (and moral) goal of reducing Iraq's capacity to build and maintain an unchecked storehouse of prohibited weapons...
...69 percent in Knoxville, Tennessee...
...As a result of these and war-related damage to water-supply and sewage-treatment systems, disease and malnutrition have risen sharply...
...For the government of Iraq has needlessly prolonged the crisis by obstructing UNSCOM's work...
...The answer lies in social forces beyond the control of church leaders...
...That pattern began with Iraq's 1991-95 refusal to implement UN Resolutions 706 and 712...
...And how do we relieve the suffering of innocents that might result from actions taken against those leaders...
...9 Second, there is the dilemma of accurately assessing to what extent the economic embargo has actually imposed hardship on the Iraqi people...
...At its core, then, the question is: Do sanctions kill babies, or do Saddam Hussein's own policies kill them...
...During the debate about sanctions, the cavalier use of data by some religious and peace groups has been especially disconcerting...
...So too, demonstrating that sanctions contribute significantly to the continuing humanitarian ordeal in Iraq does not mean that such hardship necessarily leads directly to large-scale death...
...The sanctions are about to enter an unprecedented eighth year...
...In the first three years of sanctions, those fifty years and older died in higher percentages because of the absence of heart, kidney, and other medications, along with the lack of equipment replacements...
...As leakage from the oil embargo has increased over the years, Baghdad's revenues have risen...
...Thus, Saddam Hussein's actions do not inspire the confidence that, should sanctions be lifted, incoming resources and revenues would be used to restock hospitals, to eliminate malnutrition, etc...
...Despite the sanctions, Iraq has not been without financial resources...
...They use religious education programs, youth ministry, and marriage preparation to explain how same-faith marriages contribute to marital stability, commitment to the church, and one's chances of passing the faith on to one's children...
...On one level, Baghdad's refusal to utilize the humanitarian safety net provided by the UN casts a long shadow of blame back on itself...
...It has managed to earn annual export revenues of $700-800 million through a small, illicit, but lucrative oil trade via Turkey and Iran, and by limited oil sales through Jordan...
...But the translation of the sanctions to death and devastation rests with choices made by the government of Iraq itself in allocating its limited resources...
...But I do not share the view of these groups that (1) sanctions constitute a genocide of Iraqis for which the West (read the United States) is to blame, or that (2) the international community (again read the United States) has sacrificed innocents as "acceptable" casualties in the struggle to control Saddam Hussein's ambitions to develop an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction...
...While no effort should be spared to reduce the suffering of the Iraqi people, proponents for the removal of sanctions have failed to address these ethical quandaries...
...The original research sources that gave rise to exaggerated figures such as "1 million deaths due to sanctions" have printed adjustments and corrections, but these revised data have not been acknowledged by activists...
...A moral case against sanetions should be able to stand on the basis of ten thousand innocent deaths or even one thousand innocent deaths...
...It has made the United States the tacit advocate of illegality and vigilantism...
...By April 1995, a more detailed oil-for-food program came into being through Resolution 986, which was later bolstered by Resolution 1111...
...It is clear that the sanctions have caused severe health and nutrition problems in Iraq...
...Voices' rallying point has been its claim that between 600,000 and I million Iraqis have died as a result of the UN-supported sanctions, with a large proportion of these being children...
...But such arguments fail to acknowledge that Iraq is the only nation in recent times whose leader has sworn to use prohibited weapons, has a demonstrated record of using them, and denies international access to the records and places that would support Iraq's claim that no such programs exist...
...Simply stated: It is not true that I million Iraqis have died as a result of sanctions...
...Yet, interfaith marriages accounted for 30 percent of all marriages sanctioned by the Catholic church in 1997 (Official Catholic Directory [OCD...
...9 First, there is the problem of what to do about a brutal dictator who attacks not only his neighbors, but his own people with chemical agents, and who repeatedly frustrates attempts to secure full disclosure of Iraq's biological, chemical, nuclear, and other weapons programs...
...The affair has done serious damage to the administration's own policies, as well as to the national interest...
...They are less likely to accept traditional beliefs (such as the Nicene Creed), agree with the church's sexual and reproductive norms, and comply with the church's social teachings...
...Nor does it mean that the primary or sole responsibility for the crisis rests with Western governments and the UN Security Council...
...Many have preferred to repeat highly inflated numbers...
...James D. Davidson INTERFAITH MARRIAGE Location, location, location ompared to Catholics with same-faith spouses, Catholics in interfaith marriages are more likely to experience marital discord and divorce...
...In fact, what sanctions protestors fail to acknowledge is the real possibility that with the cessation of sanctions the world might see not only malnourished and dying Iraqi children, but continuing human-rights abuses, and the further development of weapons of mass destruction...
...Some suggest that Iraq has profited by manipulating oil-futures markets...
...Saddam Hussein could have used these limited but, nonetheless, significant resources to address the needs of his people...
...Recent reports from Baghdad indicate that even the limited success of relief efforts that has occurred may compromise the Iraqis' claim that the humanitarian crisis warrants a full lifting of sanctions...
Vol. 125 • September 1998 • No. 15
