Bush was the architect of the massacre that folks in the United States commonly call the Gulf War and of the sanctions that have killed even more innocent people in Iraq than the bombs. Bush is a favorite son of Texas and father of the current governor, and I understand why people in Austin greeted him warmly. The Clinton administration has picked up where Bush left off, pursuing the same immoral, illegal and ineffective policies. Sanctions destroy the family, undermining women's social and economic advances and encouraging a brain-drain. Sanctions constitute a serious breach of the United Nations charter on human rights and children's rights.
Sanctions are a counter-productive, bankrupt concept that has led to unacceptable human suffering.
The U.S. policy violates a number of basic tenets of international law, such as the Geneva Conventions prohibition of the use of starvation. Perhaps the biggest outrage is that the suffering imposed on innocent Iraqis has done nothing to advance real peace. The Iraqi people, living on the edge of survival, have few resources for pressing for constructive, democratic political change within Iraq. Sanctions encourage isolation, alienation and fanaticism. But, of course, democratic change is not the goal of U.S. policy in Iraq.