We must call for an immediate end to the preparations for Gulf War II, a cessation of political demands which neither Iraq or any other country could be expected to fulfill, a beginning of true political dialogue aimed at relieving the suffering of the Iraqi people and bringing Iraq back into the community of nations. The UN sanctions imposed on the people of Iraq are immoral due to the horrific suffering they continue to bring to the civilian population, particularly its children. Pope John Paul II has called them a pitiless embargo, saying that the weak and innocent cannot pay for mistakes for which they are not responsible.

After more than seven years of sanctions, the United Nation’s own Food and Agricultural Organization reports that over 1.2 million Iraqi civilians, including 576,000 children, have died from starvation or preventable disease directly relating to the sanctions. UNICEF reported late last year that 4,500 Iraqi children are dying each month. On Jan. 12 Dennis Haliday, the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq, stated that Iraq would need in the neighborhood of $30 billion/year to meet its current requirements for food, medicine, and infrastructures. The recently proposed doubling of the UN’s oil for food deal from $2.6 billion to $5.2 billion falls well short of meeting these basic needs and does not even begin to address repairing Iraq’s shattered infrastructure, its medical system, which is in total collapse, or its devastated economy.

It is immoral to target a civilian population, as these sanctions have done. Saddam Hussein is not directly harmed by them, nor will he relinquish his power, as most Americans hope, as long as the UN is dominated by U.S. interests. The sanctions are, in fact, on par with the very weapons of mass destruction they are intended to curtail. We must learn from history. The poverty and humiliation with which Germany was burdened after World War I gave rise to resentment among German people, which brought us Adolf Hitler, World War II, and the Holocaust. If compassion and reason prevail, we will not repeat that mistake with Iraq.

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