Iraq Under Siege, Updated Edition: The Deadly Impact of Sanctions and War Book

A very mixed bag of essays criticizing sanctions and US bombing campaigns against Iraq in the 1990's. Most of the essays draw moral equivalence between the US and Saddam Hussein, fail to acknowledge Saddam's culpability for failing to distribute resources and fix key infrastructure even though we know he had the funds (he was intentionally depriving disloyal regions), and put forward an incredibly simplistic view of USFP. I don't know how many times the writers in here accused the US simply of wanting to dominate the Middle East to get oil and using 9/11 as a pretext. This volume also doesn't put forth a realistic alternative either to the Gulf War or to some kind of cage for Saddam.

The moral earnestness expressed in these essays is admirable at times. Some of these activists travelled to Iraq at great risk to provide medicine and other necessities, and this can only be admired and praised even though it was technically illegal.

This book's claims about 500,000 excess childhood deaths in the 1990's has been thrown into question by two British demographers in a recent article in the BMJ of Global Health. They show the flaws in the UNICEF studies upon which those claims were made through post 2003 health surveys that showed no major uptick in childhood mortality. They present evidence of GOI manipulation of data and UNICEF studies, which fits logically into Iraq's strategy to use the suffering of their people to undermine public support for sanctions. Of course, this would not be the first time that left wing activists, who really see no limit to America's ability to do evil, would be suckered by authoritarian propaganda. This doesn't mean that there wasn't real suffering in IQ related to the sanctions. However, this book doesn't probe the toughest ethical dilemma behind sanctions. If A. sanctions contribute to Iraqi civilian suffering and B. Saddam could alleviate that suffering through accepting O4F, complying with UN inspections, or just supplying enough aid and infrastructural repairs to help his own people but C. Saddam won't do that, because he doesn't care and can use this humanitarian suffering to further his own rule then D. Can the US rightfully persist with a comprehensive sanctions policy and blame the suffering on Saddam when there's no realistic chance of him changing his actions? This is not an easy one, and yet in their fervor to denounce the US and excuse Saddam the authors of this book overlook it completely.

Now that many of the stats that underlie this book are being called into question, it really only has value for understanding left-wing critics of USFP. It was simplistic, self-righteous, and frankly annoying.