When does “regrettable collateral damage” become a deliberate and calculated war against families? This is an important question to consider now.
Seven percent of all bombs dropped during the Gulf War in 1991 were so-called smart bombs. In total, three-quarters of the 80,000 tons of explosives dropped by coalition forces during the Gulf War missed the intended target. As a result, numerous hospitals were damaged, 9,000 homes were destroyed and approximately 3,500 Iraqi civilians were killed. The use of inaccurate dumb bombs is one explanation for civilian slaughter, assuming that some of these civilian targets were not deliberately targeted. But, in fact, we know they were.

One widely publicized example involved a bomb shelter in Baghdad that harbored the families of an entire neighborhood. Hundreds of these people, entire families, were incinerated when the United States deliberately targeted, bombed and destroyed this neighborhood bomb shelter. The United States admitted that this shelter had been deliberately destroyed because it was believed to be a military communications center. Subsequent inspection of the bombed-out facility by reporters from international media found no evidence of any military communications. They found just incinerated bodies – the ashes of neighborhood life. The United States military never apologized.

In any case, by war’s end, more than 50,000 Iraqi soldiers were dead, as were several hundred soldiers of the coalition forces. Immediately after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, an international trade embargo was enforced upon Iraq, severely limiting what it could sell or purchase. The embargo is still in effect and has had a far more damaging effect on the health of the Iraqi people than the actual war itself. Before the Gulf War, 70 percent of Iraq’s population lived in urban areas served by sophisticated electrical grids and modern water and sewage systems. Nearly three-quarters of their food was imported, as were most of their medicines and medical supplies. The sale of oil produced 90 percent of all export earnings and paid for the commodities that formed the basis of a modern society.

The deliberate bombing of the nation’s electricity-generating plants condemned all Iraqi families to terrible hardships, illnesses and for some, death. The electrical pumps that delivered water to homes across the nation ceased operating. The electrical equipment that moved and processed sewage in towns and cities across the nation no longer functioned. As a result, water is no longer pumped through the distribution system and sewage is left untreated. Post-war economic sanctions have made repair of these facilities impossible.

Meanwhile cholera, polio, typhoid, hepatitis A and diarrhea sicken and kill children in home after home by the tens of thousands. Bombed power-generating stations cannot power refrigerators and freezers in hospitals. Desperately needed vaccines and medicines spoil on the shelves and have not been replaced. Severe shortages of medicine and medical equipment persist in the years after the war because of the economic sanctions. In part these shortages exist because of the extreme poverty Iraq has experienced as a result of the sanctions. In other cases, the international manufacturers and suppliers of critical medical supplies simply refuse to deal with potential Iraqi buyers. Venders fear difficulties collecting payment, and they fear intimidation by the United States, which threatens sanctions against companies that deal with Iraq, even in commodities that are not prohibited by sanctions.

In the summer of 1991, a Harvard-based group of researchers conducted a comprehensive, nationwide investigation of child deaths during and after the war. They found that the rate of infant mortality tripled during the first half of 1991, resulting in 33,000 additional dead babies during that period. The researchers documented that 70,000 children under age 15 died in 1991, most of them victims of economic sanctions. This pallid, carefully crafted phrase fails to conjure up the image of tens of thousands of small burial caskets and grieving families.

Moreover, the Harvard group determined that an additional 35,000 civilians died during the postwar civil violence. In summary, 30 times as many civilians died of postwar health effects as died during the war itself. A 1995 United Nations study found that approximately 500,000 children died in the five-year period after the war, from both war and sanction-related causes. The evidence clearly indicates that this has been a war against the people – families, mothers and children, the infants of Iraq. A savage slaughter of the innocents, and the United States has been the driving force.

In the years after the Gulf War, various United Nations agencies have repeatedly warned that the majority of Iraqis are suffering psychological and behavioral problems, such as “extreme deprivation,” and “severe hunger.” As victims of economic sanctions, malnourished mothers cannot sustain healthy pregnancies. Unhealthy low-weight Iraqi babies increased from 4 percent in 1990 to 22 percent in 1995. The Harvard team found that half the families surveyed suffered from heavy debts, and that 60 percent of the women interviewed reported psychological problems, often complicated by anxiety-related physical problems. Researchers who interviewed more than 200 primary school age children in the months after the war found extremely high levels of psychological stress. Two-thirds of these unfortunate children did not believe they would live to be adults.

If the United States drops bombs on their neighborhoods again, how many thousands of these Iraqi children will have their worst fears realized?

Bush’s military opinion makers have launched a massive “PsyOps” campaign to make the American public, and the people of all potential “allies,” for that matter, believe that the new, improved weaponry will be precise and accurate. The idea is that “smart weapons” such as laser-guided missiles and smart bombs will only kill the enemy and will leave neighborhoods and families unscathed. The theme is that this will be a humane war with only “minimal collateral damage.” As an analysis by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences entitled War with Iraq points out, this may make for convincing pro-war propaganda, but it is military nonsense: On April 3, 2002, as part of its reprisal operations on the West Bank, Israeli forces entered the town of Jenin (and the adjacent refugee camp). After a week of occasionally ferocious fighting, 23 Israeli soldiers and 52 Palestinians (some of them civilians) were dead. For Israel, Jenin turned into a nightmare of ambushes, booby traps, and door-to-door fighting in a densely populated urban maze. Israel’s losses were high, civilian casualties were unavoidable, widespread and visible destruction of civilian infrastructure took place, and politically damaging television footage of the devastation flooded the world. In this combat context, Israel’s enormous military superiority – its advantages in technology, heavy equipment, air power, and trained military personnel – were undermined, neutralized, or irrelevant, and could be employed in this heavily populated urban environment only if Israel were willing to cause enormous casualties among civilians. War on Iraq will be much the same, bloody and full of unknown dangerous consequences for Iraq, the United States and the world. Despite the “PsyOps” blitz, the repeated use of lies and jingoistic patriotism, Bush’s war on Iraq is a criminal, murderous assault on Iraqi families. Moreover, it is a tragic waste of the lives of American soldiers who are just cannon fodder for the new imperialism and the corporate lust for Iraqi oil.

However, the breadth and depth of the international peace movement is a weapon with far more potential than all of Bush’s smart bombs and guided missiles. The explosive growth and consolidation of the worldwide peace movement is the only weapon that can defeat militaristic imperialism. Ultimately only the peace movement can save the domestic economy of the United States.

The children of Iraq do not believe they will live to be adults. We must prove them wrong.

--DAvid Lawrence is a contributor to Political Affairs.