MIM NOTES No. 190  July 15, 1999

Amerikan bombs are still falling on Iraq

On June 18, the United Snakes bombed Iraq again. This is not the only date in 
recent weeks when the U.$. brought destruction from above onto Iraq. The U.$. 
bombed an "Iraqi radar facility after being fired upon by Iraqi forces in the 
northern" air occupation zone. Iraq says one person was injured and several 
buildings were destroyed in the attack.

Iraq rightly considers the air-occupation zones to be an infringement of Iraqi 
sovereignty. The zones were nominally set up to protect the Kurds in the 
region from the Iraqi government, but in fact exist only to weaken the Iraqi 
regime and provide a continuing pretext for military and economic war with 
Iraq.

The economic war has even more devastating consequences for Iraq than the 
current or 1991 air wars against the country. The main justification for this 
current stage of the war is to stop Iraq from developing weapons of mass 
destruction (WMD).

The conservative journal Foreign Affair studied the WMD hype and compared WMD 
effects with those of sanctions. First, the authors compared the numbers of 
people killed through history by WMD and the difficulties in actually using 
WMD to kill: "The dangers posed by chemical and biological weapons, like those 
from rogue states and international terrorism, are often exaggerated and for 
the most part still merely theoretical." The article puts the current security 
fears of the u.$ in context with the Cold War and bluntly calls fears of tiny 
rogue states and terrorism to be overblown.

"How do the human cost of the Iraqi sanctions compare with those weapons of 
mass destruction?" The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki together 
killed more than 100,000 people, and a high estimate suggests that some 80,000 
died from chemical weapons in World War I. Adding on the deaths from later 
uses of chemical weapons in war or warlike situations (excluding the deaths of 
non-combatants in the Nazi gas chambers), as well as deaths caused by 
intentional or accidental use of biological weapons and ballistic missiles, 
the resulting total comes to well under 400,000. If the U.N. estimates of the 
human damage in Iraq are even roughly correct, economic sanctions have caused 
the deaths of more people in Iraq than have been slain by all so-called 
weapons of mass destruction throughout history.

The pro-Amerikan (if anti-sanctions) article than goes on to examine the 
domestic response: "It is interesting that this lose of human life has failed 
to make a great impression in the United States." According to the article, 
during the Gulf War 60% of Amerikans held the Iraqi people innocent for the 
actions of their government. 

So why would Amerikans choose to ignore the U.$. war against Iraq, or when 
forced to confront the murder of half a million Iraqi children, they agree 
with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright that "it's a price worth paying." 
Because this ongoing war against Iraq is good for Amerikan imperialism. The 
majority of people in the u.$. have an economic interest in imperialism as 
they benefit from the superprofits stolen from the Third World. And for this 
reason, the faith of the revolution must be put not in the Amerikan working 
class, but in the proletariat of the Third World who, along with the 
peasantry, make up a majority of the world's population.

Note: Foreign Affairs May/June 1999.