Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2001 05:53:25 -0400
To: Matthew Gaylor <freematt@coil.com>
From: Matthew Gaylor <freematt@coil.com>
Subject: What About the Children? by Jacob G. Hornberger
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<http://www.fff.org/comment/ed1001d.asp>

What About the Children?
by Jacob G. Hornberger, October 2001


One of the most disturbing aspects of Osama bin Laden's October 7 
videotape has been the reaction of U.S. officials to one of his 
charges -- that the U.S. government has killed a million Iraqi 
children. As far as I know, not one government official has denied 
the charge.

Why not? It would seem to be rather important to deny such an accusation.

Every time I ask someone whether they know anything about the charge, 
the response is the same: "That's ridiculous. If our government had 
killed a million children, we would have heard about it."

Unfortunately, the evidence suggests that bin Laden's charge might in 
fact be true -- that for the past 10 years, the government of one of 
the greatest nations in history has engaged in the systematic killing 
of hundreds of thousands of innocent children.

On September 30, 1998, BBC News Online Network reported, "The 
outgoing coordinator of the UN oil-for-food deal in Iraq said it was 
correct to draw attention to the '4,000 to 5,000 children dying 
unnecessarily every month due to the impact of sanctions because of 
the breakdown of water and sanitation, inadequate diet, and the bad 
internal health situation.'"

And a Reuter's release dated July 21, 2000, stated, "A senior UN 
official, Anupama Rao Singh, country director for UNICEF, said Friday 
about half a million children under the age of 5 have died in Iraq 
since the imposition of UN sanctions 10 years ago."

If these reports are true, what does it portend for the American 
people, who have in the past condemned citizens in foreign lands for 
looking the other way when *their* governments were killing 
multitudes of innocent people?

What was the reaction of the Clinton administration to the horrific 
consequences of the U.S. embargo against Iraq? In a 1996 *60 Minutes* 
interview, U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told Leslie 
Stahl, "This is a very hard choice, but the price, we think the price 
is worth it."

Worth the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent children? Might 
parents in the Middle East feel differently?

Albright and her boss, President Clinton, based their claim that the 
deaths of Iraqi children were "worth it" on their belief that the 
embargo would ultimately "squeeze" Iraq's ruler, Saddam Hussein, into 
relinquishing political power. But can such a political goal morally 
justify the use of Iraqi civilians in such a manner -- especially 
children?

There are, of course, those who say that Americans should not examine 
the terrorists' motives for the September 11 attacks, because to do 
so might suggest that "we had it coming to us." Most people would 
agree that nothing -- especially wrongful conduct by the victims' 
government -- can justify those attacks. But should we permit the 
September 11 attacks to relieve American citizens of the 
responsibility for examining whether the U.S. government is guilty of 
targeting foreign citizens because of acts committed by their own 
government?

The American people seek to avenge the deaths of the 6,000 people who 
died in the attacks on September 11. But imagine the following: 
Suppose Iraqi terrorists had instead hijacked planes filled with 
elementary school students and then intentionally crashed them into a 
convention center that they knew contained several hundred thousand 
Cub Scouts and Brownies, killing everyone.

How much angrier would Americans then be?

Consider the following excerpt from the statement that Ramzi Ahmed 
Yousef, one of the terrorists who bombed the World Trade Center in 
1993, made to the federal judge at his sentencing hearing: "You keep 
talking also about collective punishment and killing innocent people 
to force governments to change their policies; you call this 
terrorism when someone would kill innocent people or civilians in 
order to force the government to change its policies. Well, when you 
were the first one who invented this terrorism.... And now you have 
invented new ways to kill innocent people. You have so-called 
economic embargo which kills nobody other than children and elderly 
people.... You are the ones who invented terrorism and using it every 
day. You are butchers, liars, and hypocrites."

Yousef's statement raises two troubling questions: First, in the 
long, nasty war that might lie ahead, is it possible that the enemy 
will be angrier and more motivated to kill than Americans are? 
Second, why didn't U.S. government officials stop the embargo once 
they realized not only that it was producing perverse consequences 
but also that those perverse consequences were a principal motive 
behind the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center?

Isn't it incumbent on a citizenry to make its government stop 
wrongful conduct against innocent people, even in the midst of war? 
As a moral matter, shouldn't we leave the barbarity to the enemy? 
Isn't it in our interests to do so?

© 2001 The Future of Freedom Foundation. All rights reserved.


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