By a contributor February 18, 2005
Certain individuals, presuming to refute Ward Churchill's "Some People Push Back" essay that is causing the governor of Colorado to ask for Ward Churchill's resignation from the University of Colorado, are suggesting Amerikans could not have known about the effects of the Iraq sanctions long before 9/11, at least enough to act. The argument goes that since such people "did not know," they cannot hold moral responsibility as "little Eichmanns" as Ward Churchill charged. What counts as actionable information is the underlying question.
The low quality of the imperialist media's output is worth mentioning. Progressives should seek to raise the truth quotient in politics, and that includes raising the truth quotient in public opinion. News media, which both influences and reflects public opinion, can water down or otherwise distort the truth. To point out that the vast majority of Amerikans could have known about the child mortality effects of the sanctions against Iraq, for instance, is not to say that the media coverage of the Iraq sanctions was adequate politically. As Maria Alanis points out, mainstream media coverage of Iraq sanctions has been lacking, numerically speaking and otherwise, since September 11, 2001, yet more proof of the need for the oppressed to have their own independent institutions, including newspapers.(1)
Undoubtedly, an Iraqi child mortality figure repeated matter-of-factly by a news announcer on a bourgeois news program is not going to be really inspiring. [mim3@mim.org interjects: No one can find a reference for the alleged Stalin quote "An individual death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic," but if he said it, it would surely be referring to his frustration in communicating with the public via statistics, not a belief that a million deaths is unimportant. Quite the contrary, Stalin put the group above the individual as do all communists.]
Saying something like " according to the Iraqi government , this number of Iraqi children have died..." is obscuring things, too. But repeated exposure to such coverage should be enough motivation for even the densest Amerikan to delve a little bit more deeply into the Iraq sanctions question. That the vast majority of Amerikans did not is directly related to their parasitic privileges, decadence, and oppressor politics. Far from opposing the Iraq sanctions, most Amerikans have expressed support for the Iraq sanctions, lifted partially only in May 2003. And most of those who verbally opposed the Iraq sanctions failed to act in any way to oppose them.
Contrary to Robert Jensen's argument, low-level stock traders have just as much responsibility as high-level stock traders when both absolutely fail to act against imperialist militarism and genocide. To say only those high on the corporate and political ladders have great responsibility is opportunism and strategically disorienting. But let's leave aside for now what Amerikans did not do. Let's look at what they did do.
An October 22, 1990, telephone poll (before the Persian Gulf War began) conducted by Yankelovich Clancy Shulman shows that 56% of Amerikans wanted to "continue sanctions." 32% wanted to "take military action." Only 4% voluntarily indicated "neither." A November 1990 telephone poll conducted by the same marketing firm shows that 57% of Amerikans wanted to "continue sanctions." 35% wanted to "take military action." Only 1% voluntarily indicated "neither."
A July 31, 1991, Gallup telephone poll (after the Gulf War ended) shows that 52% of Amerikans supported "leaving the sanctions in place as long as Saddam Hussein remains in power." 37% supported "allowing Iraq to sell some oil if the money goes to pay for food and medical supplies." Only 6% supported "lifting the sanctions to allow Iraq to resume."
In May 1996, Madeline Albright did not dispute 500+ thousand Iraqi children dead from Iraq sanctions on 60 Minutes. A September 10, 1996, telephone poll conducted by the Los Angeles Times, several months after the 60 Minutes broadcast, shows that 16% of Amerikans supported continuing "economic sanctions against Iraq." 9% supported continuing "military operations against Iraq." 58% supported continuing "both economic sanctions and military operations."
A November 25, 1997, telephone poll by CBS News and New York Times shows that only 14% of DemoKKKrats supported making the Iraq sanctions "less restrictive." 80% said they should be "continued as they are now." 79% of Amerikans in general said they should be "continued as they are now." (RepubliKKKans were slightly worse than Demokrats, but independents made Amerikans as a whole more supportive than even Demokrats of making the Iraq sanctions less restrictive.)
The u.$. population as a whole, but particularly the oppressor Euro-Amerikan nation, is privileged compared with oppressed nations and even compared with imperialist countries like Russia. Polls conducted by the United States Information Agency, for example, show that Russians supported the Iraq sanctions less than Amerikans did. Amerikans obtain privileges from imperialist parasitism, so much so that the majority are exploiters. So, when the mainstream media consistently papers over the consequences of the Iraq sanctions for Iraqi children, that really is not surprising. For certain reasons, such representations of the Iraq sanctions correspond to the interests of most Amerikans. Amerikans' supporting the Iraq sanctions was not an instance of false consciousness for most Amerikans. For anti-imperialists sorting out what demands to support and what demographics to work with, this is strategically important to know.
At the same time, however, the reactionary politics of the majority of Amerikans cannot be attributed to a lack of information. True, better information was available than in the mainstream media, but that is precisely the point. In "Some People Push Back," Ward Churchill notes that "as a whole, the American public greeted these [mainstream media!] revelations with yawns" and continued to engage in self-absorbed chauvinism and decadence, when they could have spent an hour finding and reading better information on the Iraq sanctions.
There are tons of non-mainstream sources on the Iraq sanctions, but it is interesting to see what even the mainstream sources were putting out.
One TV example is from Larry King Live on September 13, 1993.(2) General Norman Schwarzkopf did not dispute the fact that "the Iraqi children, the people, and the elderly are dying because of the sanctions," only saying "that the sanctions are applied by the United Nations." On Larry King Live, January 19, 1993, Pentagon spokespersyn Pete Williams did not dispute that "allied bombing" had an effect on Iraqi children and wimmin.(3)
On November 3, 1992, CBS News' Bob Simon reported from Baghdad:
Mr. Bush does not have many fan clubs anywhere in Iraq. He is remembered here as the man who bombed Iraqi children, as the man who's now making their lives miserable by keeping economic sanctions in force even though the war is now over. Even opponents to the regime have their own reasons for resenting Mr. Bush. He is remembered by them as the man who encouraged the Kurds and Shiites and other dissidents to rise up against Saddam Hussein when the war was over and then abandon them to the not-very-tender mercies of the regime.(4)
What the above illustrates is that, while Iraq did not support terrorism, the murderous Iraq sanctions were contributing to Iraqis' and possibly others' anger toward the united $tates. Other TV news programs dealt with the consequences of the Iraq sanctions more directly:
On November 21, 1992, CNN's Gale Young reported from Baghdad:
"The accord [U.N. accord allowing limited UNICEF aid in Iraq] was signed after UNICEF director James Grant toured Iraqi hospitals. Baghdad said these children are suffering from disease and malnutrition because it does not have the hard currency needed to import food and medicine, allowed under the terms of the embargo. . . . The United States tried, unsuccessfully, to block the UNICEF agreement saying it gave Iraq too much control. Baghdad, meanwhile, maneuvered to limit the number of U.N. guards allowed under the pact. But these power struggles are probably beyond the comprehension of most of the Iraqi children caught in the middle."(5)
On World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, January 16, 1992, Dennis Troute reported from Baghdad:
The young suffer disproportionately because they depend on powdered milk which is scarce. Western analysts estimate that 30 percent of Iraqi children are malnourished. Infectious diseases are rampant, including cholera and typhoid, in part because power and water treatment plants have not been fully restored. Medicines are not supposed to be affected by the embargo, but they are in short supply all the same and doctors are frustrated.(6)
Remarkably, Troute stated the above as facts, or attributed them to "Western analysts," not the Iraqi government.
On World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, July 4, 1991, ABC News' Dennis Troute reported from Washington, D.C.:
Dr. Michael Viola and two other American doctors have just returned from Baghdad, their research and that of other foreign doctors shows that the infant mortality rate in many hospitals has more than tripled since last year. A recent study by UNICEF, the United Nations relief agency for children, reaches the same conclusion. Relief workers and Iraqis blame the shortages of food, as well as medicine and drinking water, on the international sanctions still in place against Baghdad. The sanctions prevent Iraq from selling oil and raising money for food and the expensive machinery needed to get sanitation facilities running again. The sanctions do allow emergency deliveries of food and medicine, but relief agencies say despite their best efforts they are falling far short of Iraq's needs. Here in Washington, the Bush Administration's own National Security analysts have warned the White House that large numbers of Iraqi children will die this summer without massive imports of food and medicine. The White House argues that the sanctions provide important leverage against Saddam Hussein, but American doctors, as well as Iraqis now are pointing out that Saddam Hussein is not the one going hungry.(7)
On Nightline, May 30, 1991, ABC News' Ted Koppel reported:
Whatever pressure that may be putting on the Iraqi president, it is certainly a hardship on the Iraqi people. Indeed, a team of U.S. doctors recently returned from a tour of Iraq and predicted that the impact of the sanctions is devastating, especially on the children. Similar projections have been made by UNICEF and by the International Red Cross.(8)
Dennis Troute followed up with:
These undernourished children are victims of a war which had just started when they were born. They've become the subject of growing alarm for doctors both in Iraq and in the West. Relief workers talk about the real possibility of tens of thousands of deaths. . . . The sanctions against Iraq heighten the dangers confronting its children in several ways. Milk, medicine and chemicals needed to purify water are in short supply because the sanctions bar Iraq from selling its oil to purchase new stocks. That's true also of spare parts needed to fix generators damaged during the war. Without adequate power, it is impossible to treat sewage or to refrigerate food. The problem of food shortages is most acute among Iraq's poor. They were dependent on inexpensive foods subsidized by petroleum sales over the past decade. Now government milk rations have been cut by two-thirds. When there is food, they often cannot afford it. With the sanctions still in place, they see no relief in sight. . . . Infant mortality rates, which were three percent before the war, now are above 13 percent. Doctors expect them to get worse. An examination of death certificates at the children's hospital shows that the most frequent cause of death is marasmus, or a wasting away of tissue in an advanced state of malnutrition. Relief workers say problems are worsening because critical supplies in this country of 18 million are being exhausted much faster than they can ever be replaced.(8)
On World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, May 21, 1991, ABC News' John McWethy reported from the State Department:
The Harvard [S]tudy [T]eam predicts that 170,000 Iraqi children under the age of five will die in the next year from delayed effects of the war. They will die because in some parts of Iraq there is still no electricity, no sewage treatment, no functioning hospitals. There is already severe malnutrition the report says and widespread cases of cholera, typhoid and gastroenteritis. During the hot months of summer, the situation will get worse. Iraq's ability to help itself is severely limited because of the UN embargo prohibiting Iraq from selling its oil to the outside world.(9)
Again, there are hundreds of other examples like these in the mainstream newspaper and television news media. All of the above handful of selected TV examples were taken from just 1991-1993. It is wrong for opportunists to feign ignorance on behalf of the labor aristocracy in order to say the "American people" could not have known enough to act, not even enough to go out and get more information.
Notes:
1. Maria Alanis, "Media Coverage of Iraq Sanctions," October 20, 2003, http://soc.hfac.uh.edu/artman/publish/article_29.shtml (accessed February 18, 2005).
2. Transcript #914 (the reference system of electronic source "Lexis-Nexis")
3. Transcript #743.
4. Transcript.
5. Transcript # 226 - 3.
6. Transcript.
7. Transcript.
8. Transcript.
9. Transcript.