Today marks the 10th anniversary of the attack on Iraq through siege, the imposition of the most comprehensive economic sanctions of modern times. Though administered through the United Nations, the sanctions are the result of U.S. policy and power, of this nation's rejection of the international consensus to lift the siege. It's hard to tell, because U.S. officials have made both statements, giving Saddam little reason to think that he can satisfy the United States. From the viewpoint of creating and maintaining real peace, U.S. policy is a failure. Living on the edge of survival, the Iraqi people have few resources for pressing political change.
Sanctions encourage isolation, alienation and possibly fanaticism.
But from the point of view of maintaining and extending U.S. power, the policy has worked. Recalcitrant regimes must be broken so that the flow of oil profits to U.S. and British banks and corporations is not threatened. Iraq, an ally throughout the 1980s until it challenged the U.S. system, is so devastated that it will be decades before it can rebuild. To oppose the sanctions is not to support the brutal regime of Saddam Hussein, but to reject genocide. Rather than stage-manage a genocide, Halliday resigned in protest in 1998.