Were Iraq Sanctions Right?

David Rieff writes a good article in the New York Times asking whether sanctions in Iraq were ethical.

It seems like the relatively easy invasion of Iraq by U.S. forces were the result of the 13 years of military sanctions in that country. The lack of weapons of mass destruction can also be explained in part by the lack of money to fund research. That the sanctions were so sucessful make the case for war so much more difficult--why did the U.S. risk U.S. lives and the state of our economy if Hussein was already not a risk?

Like any sanction, the effects hit the Iraq poor the hardest. As Rieff points out "these observations do not answer the question of whether any policy... is worth the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children." The Clinton Administration thought the deaths were justifiable, in a just infamous quote from then-Secretary of State Madeline Albright, who told a television interviewer that "we think the price is worth it." Today's article gives a stunning admission from Albright, who now admits "It was a genuinely stupid thing to say."

peace groups have always had an uneasy relationship with sanctions. Once upon a time we called on politicians to use sanctions in place of armed war. The shock of hundreds of thousands of children dying from sanctions made us reevaluate them and groups like Voice in the Wilderness were founded to end the sanctions. Saddam Hussein used the effects of sanctions for propaganda purposes, putting U.S. activists in an almost impossible situation between the U.S. and Iraqi propaganda machines, one insisting the sanctions caused no harm, the other that it was a form of genocide. peace groups have to be bold enough to go into the grey areas of public policy but it's a hard struggle to keep our eyes on the truth in such situations (Voices did it admirably in my opinion, which is why they've become such a respected organization in so short a time).

I think this Times article is one of the first we'll be seeing over the next few years, as we all try to understand the role of sanctions in war and peace. See Sanctions on Iraq: Myth and Reality for Voices' overview.