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  Michael Schwartz Schwartz is a fifth-year sociology student who can be reached at tiggertrot@hotmail.com. Click Here for more articles by Michael Schwartz

Since the United States has once again decided to bomb the nation of Iraq, it’s important to understand the facts concerning Iraq and the United States itself. The bombs we have dropped have killed many innocent civilians and even the Los Angeles Times reported on Feb. 22 that more than half the bombs dropped missed their target.

Some people, like Professor Theodore Anderson (“U.S. intervention helps both sides,” Viewpoint, Letters, Feb. 21), argue that actions like this are an example of the help we give to other nations and point out our “liberation” of Kuwait. But are the people of Kuwait really liberated? First of all, Kuwait is a monarchy. They do not even pretend to be a democracy. The Sabah family has ruled Kuwait since 1751. State power is transferred down through their family. When ceremonial elections are held women are banned from voting and only 10 percent of the male population is eligible. Out of a population of 1.8 million people, around 100,000 male Kuwaiti citizens have the right to vote.

The people who would have us believe that Kuwaiti citizens were “liberated” thanks to the United States do admit that we did help ourselves during the Gulf War. Kuwait happens to have the second-largest oil reserve in the world, more than 2 million barrels of oil flow out of Kuwait every day, and the United States is a main beneficiary. I would think it’s extremely likely that it was for this oil that we went to war with Iraq and I think most of you would agree.

I have a few thoughts about the hundreds of billions of dollars in U.S. aid that Professor Anderson mentioned we have sent around the world to “help people achieve a better life.” I wonder if that includes the billions of dollars that the United States gave the military regime of General Suharto of Indonesia. For those of you who are not aware, General Suharto came to power in 1965 in a CIA coup in which more than 1 million innocent civilians were killed.

Former CIA officers who took part in the coup have documented the massive genocide that took place. Historian Howard Zinn has pointed out that the CIA used their Indonesia experience to successfully overthrow the democratically elected Allende government in Chile and install the military dictatorship of General Pinochet. To top it off, almost one third of the population of East Timor was massacred by the Indonesian military, funded with the hundreds of billions of dollars given with the same intent as the mission which Professor Anderson mentioned.

General Suharto himself testified to the fact that he killed more than 10,000 Indonesian citizens during the 1980s and left corpses lying on the street as “shock therapy.” Former President Clinton called the general “our kind of guy” (http://www.zmag.org/ZMag/articles/chomskyapr98.htm).

  Illustration by GRACE HUANG/Daily Bruin

This brings us to the “help” we have brought to the people of Iraq. According to data reported by the U.S. government itself, our massive bombing campaign during the Gulf War was responsible for the deaths of more than 100,000 Iraqi soldiers and 35,000 civilians. These figures include the infamous “highway of death” incident in which thousands of retreating Iraqi soldiers were incinerated by U.S. bombs.

Since the Gulf War, the economic sanctions the United States supports so much have been responsible for the deaths of more than one million people, including more than 500,000 children.

Denis Halliday, the former U.N. coordinator for humanitarian aid to Iraq, resigned in protest, arguing that the sanctions “are starving to death 6,000 Iraqi infants every month, ignoring the human rights of ordinary Iraqis.” Halliday was not the first humanitarian official to decry the use of the sanctions. He was preceded by Hons Von Sponeck, another top humanitarian official in Iraq, who resigned after he likened the sanctions to a holocaust. Jutta Burghardt, the head of the World Food Program in Iraq, resigned in solidarity with Von Sponeck in protest of the sanctions.

When the United States bombs Iraq, it is under the guise of helping the Iraqi people and to protect us from the dictator Saddam Hussein. And when the United States condemns Hussein, one thing it constantly points to is his use of biological weapons on his own people. But let’s look at what the United States said when those attacks actually took place.

You see, Hussein did use biological warfare on his own citizens. One attack took place in 1988 in Halabja. But no one in the U.S. government got upset. Instead, we gave him uncritical support and denied that the attack even took place. In fact, the United States supported Saddam Hussein throughout the 1980s. Of course today the State Department regularly cites the attack as evidence of Hussein’s barbarism.

A Senate Banking report shows that we shipped biological weapons materials to Iraq up until 1989. U.N. Reports from 1986 and 1987 condemned Iraq’s use of chemical weapons, but the United States refused to support either of the reports.

The Reagan administration instead extended our fullest support to Hussein. More than $50 billion was given to the Iraqi government during the 1980s, another example of the “aid” we send to countries around the world. The Reagan and Bush administrations both dismissed human rights concerns regarding Iraq and, as late as 1989, former President Bush said, “normal relations between the United States and Iraq would serve our long-term interests.”

It is important to remember who created the military regime of Saddam Hussein. Where would Iraq be militarily without the $50 billion of military aid that the United States gave them? A couple of weeks ago I asked you to really think about why we go to war when we do. We are now in the midst of yet another bombing campaign against the Iraqi people. We claim it’s to protect them from a dictator whose military apparatus was built up by the United States. But is that really the reason? Do we really care about the people of Iraq? Our economic sanctions against Iraq are directly responsible for the deaths of more than 1 million human beings.

How many times are we going to let them lie to us? How many times will we fall for their claims of “protecting human rights?” I am not against helping people. I am against a government that is directly responsible for the deaths of millions of human beings. General Suharto, General Pinochet and the former Shah of Iran all came to power in CIA-sponsored coups. These men were responsible for the deaths of millions of innocent people.

And Saddam Hussein himself was also “our kind of guy.” We supported him while he carried out biological warfare against his citizens and denied it ever happened. It’s time to stop the bombing of Iraq and it’s time to end the sanctions. If there’s a “rogue state” people should be concerned about, it’s the United States. Millions of people have already been killed in our name. How many more have to die before we stand up and do something about it?