“Almost 10 years of extraordinary isolation imposed by the UN and enforced by America and Britain have killed more people than the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan.”

Paying the Price: Killing the Children of Iraq

John Pilger describes it as “the most comprehensive embargo in modern history against a country” and asks why 21 million people are “being punished for the crimes of a dictator, Saddam Hussein”. Iraq, which in 1989 had one of the lowest infant mortality rates in the world, as well as universal, free healthcare and education, now has one of the highest. Remarkably, the United States and Britain are continuing to bomb Iraq almost every day, with civilians accounting for a third of the casualties.

Paying the Price is dominated by scenes of malnourished and dying Iraqi children whose treatment is affected by the intermittent supply of drugs while clean water, fresh food, soap, paper, pencils, books and light bulbs are no longer available or extremely limited in supply.

In a Baghdad cancer clinic, Denis Halliday – who in 1998 resigned from the UN over the sanctions and intervened personally to save the lives of some children – tells Pilger: “I think in this hospital we’ve seen today evidence of the killing that is now the responsibility of the Security Council member states, particularly, I think, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair.” American Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, previously asked on American television whether the deaths of more than 500,000 children was a price worth paying, answered: “We think the price is worth it.”

In the south of the country, Pilger reports on another lethal result of the Gulf War, which followed Sadam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990. The Americans used depleted uranium in shells and missiles fired by their tanks and aircraft. Wind and dust carried the radiation across the towns and villages of southern Iraq, creating what one specialist describes as “a cancer epidemic that is likely to strike almost half the population”. The embargo has denied Iraq the equipment and expertise needed to clean up the former battlefields, as well as the technology for diagnosing cancer and drugs for treating it.

In an empty Security Council chamber at the UN, Pilger concludes: “Do the representatives of the powerful who sit here in the Security Council ever think beyond their so-called interests and manoeuvres and about their victims, small children dying needlessly half a world away? It’s time we reclaimed the United Nations. While you’ve been watching this film, countless children have died silently in Iraq. How many more will die before the silence is broken?

Meanwhile Madeline Albright and Hillary Clinton return to the College for their 60th and 50th respective reunions. Many other people who were complicit in putting the sanctions on Iraq have never paid any price for their roles in deliberately murdering so many Iraqis. (the selective morality of many Americans because Trump can serve to distract attention from war crimes committed by other, respectable, U.S. political leaders) No one is paying the price for the 40,000 Venezuelan deaths that were caused by our sanctions. How many Iranians are dead or on their way to being so because of the current sanctions on Iran? It's difficult enough for the number of deaths to be counted during all out war, but it's even more difficult to count the number from sanctions and that is why they are considered war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Iran’s economy is already floundering due to the steadily mounting sanctionsthat the Trump administration has been heaping upon it since its withdrawal from the JCPOA last year. Crucial goods are four times the price they used to be, sick Iranians are having difficulty obtaining life-saving medicine, and life in general has been getting much more difficult for the poorest and frailest Iranian civilians.

For this reason, it is a very safe bet that there have been Iranians who have died because of the sanctions. Being unable to obtain enough life-saving medicine will inevitably increase mortality rates, as will inadequate nutrition and care for those whose health is at risk. There’s not really any way around that, and it’s only going to get worse.

Can you think of anything more sociopathic than this? Off the top of my head, I personally cannot.

And that’s exactly what was supposed to happen. As far as their intended purpose is concerned, the sanctions are working. They’re doing exactly what they were intended to do: kill hurt Iranian civilians.

I am not saying that starvation sanctions are more destructive or deadly than overt military force in and of themselves; what I am saying is that the overall effect is worse, because there’s no public accountability for them and because they deliberately target civilians.

That’s real power. Not the ability to destroy a nation with bombs and missiles, but the ability to destroy it without firing a shot.

And all the innocent human beings who die of starvation and disease? They don’t matter. Imperial violence only matters if there are consequences for it. The price of shoring up the total hegemony of the empire will have been worth it.

This article was written in 1996 during the time that the sanctions on Iraq had just started during Clinton's tenure.

Iraq Sanctions Kill Children, U.N. Reports

"The United Nations humanitarian arm offers palliatives for the alleviation of suffering while the U.N. Security Council is intent on continuing the sanctions," the authors write, adding that the situation poses a challenge to "the moral, financial and political standing of the international community."

Let's not forget that for over a decade the US supported Saddam Hussein by giving him chemical weapons and then watched as he used them on Iranians during their war as well as selling him other military weapons and equipment so that he could weaken Iran for us in case we wanted to overthrow its government.

Trump, pompous Pompeo and Bolton are saying that Iran needs to change its ways and stop being the biggest sponsors of terrorism in the Middle East. This is definitely the pot calling the kettle black isn't it? The Iranian government asked us how many people have we killed with nuclear weapons? They can also ask how many countries have we destroyed and how many civilians have we killed with not only our bombs, but with our sanctions?