Profits are springing, like weeds, from the fields of the dead." – Rosa Luxemburg
"The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves." – Henry Kissinger, war criminal and Nobel Peace Prize-winner
The Iraqi crisis poses a good example for the "devaluation of the words" that in their everyday warlike and pacifist usage show extraordinary capability of providing us with indeed very few arguments. That is why this paper, lacking the excessive rhetoric and generalizations, will try to tell something about the neglected aspects of this situation but its background as well.
After the Iraqi invasion on Kuwait and the American intervention (the numbers shown in Congress say that at least 100,000 Iraqi soldiers were killed, whereas the toll of civilian casualties was not assessed), Iraq was denied equipment and professional help for decontamination of its battlefields, which resulted in a noticeable increase of malignant diseases. Under the influence and control of the USA and Britain the United Nations Commission for sanctions prevented Iraq from being supplied with necessary medical devices and supplies, for example for chemotherapy, even the vaccines for diphtheria and yellow fever, under the pretense of Iraq using these preparations to produce chemical and other weapons (that is why the Iraqi pharmaceutical plants were destroyed). Due to this "dual weapon usage" even the nitrogen oxide that is used to stop bleeding during the Caesarian section was banned. Very few journalists from the West who were interested in this bear witness to children dieing due to lack of chemotherapy and anesthetics, not allowing using morphine to ease pain – that is why people have seen one little bottle of aspirin being divided among two hundred patients. John Pilger, who won the British prize for the journalist of the year twice, the French prize Reporters sans Frontiers and the American Emmy (to name only a few), writes on all these issues in his uncommonly illuminating and sobering book "The New Rulers of the World". Being aware of the situation, two chief UN humanitarian relief coordinators for Iraq as well as the head of the World Food Program for Iraq submitted their letters of resignation. The latter one told that even she could no longer tolerate what was being done to the Iraqi people. The result of the sanctions is following: about 500,000 dead children, whereas 250,000 of them were under 5 years of age. If we add the grown ups, "the figure is now almost certainly well over a millionØ (in the words of Denis Halliday, one of the two former coordinators who had resigned). When in 1996 the US ambassador to the UN, Madame Madelaine Albright, was asked a question on the 60 Minutes show, whether the toll of 500,000 dead children was justified, she answered: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price – we think the price is worth it". And if we add to that a ban on sending parcels that contain children's clothing and toys to the relatives in Iraq, which was imposed by the Customs Service of Great Britain, and even a ban on sending books, it becomes clear that all these measures have only consolidated Saddam's dictatorship. All of this reminds us of the subjugation of Germany after World War I. The results are well known.
As it was the case with the talibans, Saddam's dictatorship regime has not always been America's and Britain's enemy. Back in 1963, when it became possible to nationalize the Iraq Petroleum Company, the foreign consortium that was exploiting the Iraqi oil, the CIA installed Saddam's political party the Ba'ath, according to the words of the party×s chief secretary. The American diplomacy refused to condemn Saddam's regime for using mustard gas and nerve gas against the Iranian soldiers and Kurdish civilians, although it was demanded on the part of human rights associations that provided evidence as well. He was given financial support during the invasion on Iran. Besides that, the American administration has supported the genocide on the Kurds (in Iraq and Turkey) and Palestinians, both directly and indirectly. Opposite to the popular opinion, the al-Qa'ida training camps "were kindergartens compared with the world’s leading university of terrorism at Fort Benning, Georgia" (Pilger). "Around 60,000 Latin American soldiers, police officers, paramilitary units members and intelligence officers have been trained there". Two thirds of military officers, who were responsible for the heinous crimes in El Salvador, were trained in Fort Benning. The students of this military school were leading death squadrons, military juntas and concentration camps for example in Chile, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama and Grenada, thus making the American administration happy, for it supported these actions directly, introducing the expression "desaparecidos" into the Latin American folklore. As the former State Department official, Mr. William Blum, who is now one of the greatest critics of the American politics, says, the USA had bombed 21 states after the World War II, whereas the largest intervention in Vietnam took 58,000 American and 4 million Vietnamese lives. With regards to the scale of bloodshed, they have competition from the Korean War, during which (according to the conservative estimates) approximately 3 million people were killed. Prominent position in this matter holds also the support for the coup and corporate taking over of power in Indonesia 1965-68 (million fatalities), but the holocaust in Cambodia 1969-70 (600,000 peasants killed in the US bombardment) just as well, which was carried out ØsecretlyØ and was not covered by mass media. The way was paved for the demented Khmer Rouge to come up through the front door. In neighbouring Laos, thirty years after the American testing of cluster bombs that scatter 160 clusters around, they "go on killing or mutilating approximately 20,000 people yearly". The USA is still among the countries that have not ratified the international agreement on land mines, the agreement on banning chemical and biological weapons, the agreement on the International War Crime Tribunal, the Convention on children's rights, the decisions of the International Labor Organization, the Kyoto Protocol etc. etc.
"The Congress investigation discovered in 1992 that Bush senior and his counsellors ordered a hush-up of the illegal weapon supplies through third countries" (Pilger). The documentation (that can be found in the Library of Congress) on smuggling of biological weapons to Iraq was mentioned in the Senate report from 1994: anthrax that was cultivated in a company in Maryland (under the license of the Department of Commerce and the permission of the State Department) and in a British state laboratory Porton Down. The slogan "business first" takes on additional meaning, if we bear in mind that America and Britain supplied both sides with weapons during the war between Iraq and Iran in 1980-90. After the Gulf war the selling of the American weapons was increased by 64 percent. That "business as usual" is also to be expected in the future shows the information that thirty two highest officials of Bush's administration used to be executives, counsellors or major share holders in the weapon industry (Source: Arms Trade Resource Center). The rest of the players are oil businessmen, whereas many industry branches are often united and represented by one powerful man – a rich share holder and/or a lobbyist – as it is the case with the vice president Dick Cheney, the representative of the petroleum elite, whose former working place, military company Halliburton, recently closed a ten-year-contract with the government in the "war against terrorism". The war is a desperately needed financial boost for the economic system, because the legendary military industrial complex makes the third of the American economy and is the strongest lobby besides the oil one, with which it interwines. The USA spends about half a trillion (500 billion) dollars on army and weapons yearly, which is half of the overall allocations of the world in this respect. Even Blair’s war enthusiasm becomes much clearer when we know that when it comes to the size Britain's war industry is second largest, after the American one. Their greatest buyer is Saudi Arabia, the most extreme Islamic regime in the world. The other customers are mutually opposed India and Pakistan, and Britain was providing the Indonesian genocide makers in East Timor for twenty years.
The US Senate passed an executive order in 2000 on the 75 million dollars aid for the poorest countries in the world, which is one tenth of the price of a B 52 bomber. The same order appropriated 1,3 billion dollars for the Columbian army which is one of the worst violators of human rights in the world, as Pilger states in his above mentioned book.
The renowned economist Ernest Mandel wrote once that every 4 years there is a World War that is being waged against children.International organizations such as the UN or the World Resources Institute state that 13 to 18 million children die of starvation yearly or rather 35,000 children daily, which means one child every two seconds. True pacifists should know that there can be no peace in the world while injustice and greed are blooming, and empty phrases on "democracy" are being made.