re: "US Troops Aren't Welcomed by Everyone..."

[Andy Coates <esquincle@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I recently studied several fact-finding medical reports on the human
costs of war in Iraq. Some brief thoughts on the WSJ article "US troops
aren't welcomed by everyone..." posted by Louis. Quotes are from the
article --

> One key to doing that is reopening Umm Qasr, a crucial gateway for
> supplies, as the U.S. and other countries race to get food, water and
> medicine into Iraq. Any delay will risk deepening the animosity.

Prior to 1991 75% of Iraq's food was imported. Presently fully 60% of
the Iraqi population has relied upon rations via the Oil for Food
Program (started distribution 1996). These rations have been distributed
in the largest food distribution program ever conducted -- organized by
the Iraqi government -- a decentralized network of 46,000 shopkeepers in
central and southern Iraq. 90% of the food in the OFFP comes through the
port of Umm Qasr. So it is no exaggeration to say that they have cut off
the majority of Iraq's food supply.

> All relief work will fall to military forces until areas are secure
> enough to permit civilian groups to enter. That could take weeks.

While Rumsfeld is busy embracing the Geneva Convention on TV we might
make the academic point that its Protocols call for a clear separation
of humanitarian and military actions, and so yet another US/UK violation
of international law is in the making. What's more it will not take
much, ie. weeks, precisely, to precipitate pre-famine conditions in
light of the degree of dependence on the OFFP.

> The U.S. Agency for International Development ... will then pick a
> U.S. contractor to oversee a massive dredging and rebuilding effort
> intended to make Umm Qasr ready to handle large cargo ships bringing
> in thousands of tons a day of relief supplies.

Anybody say Halliburton? The US government has a secret relief plan,
prepared earlier this year. (The UN too, published its report
secretly,-- which said it was utterly undprepared for the crisis about
to unfold-- so as not to appear to be anticipating the war, and thus
presumably taking a tacit stand against it.) The US plan will likely
employ stunts designed for TV pictures, like the universally-condemned
practice of dropping food rations from airplanes (yellow packages in a
size and color similar to cluster-bomblets).

> But it isn't clear whether fresh food and water will be enough to
> pacify the local populace.

The OFFP increased the daily caloric intake in Iraq from the appalling
level of about 1,000 kcal/d in 1996 to 2,400 kcal/d in 2003. The rations
contained excess carbohydrates and lacked several necessary vitamins but
as a measure of national emergency became an important common effort.
Major health indicators, such as infant mortality and child development
indices, which had been in free-fall in the early 1990s, actually
reversed and improved in recent years. These social facts stand out. The
OFFP distribution network appears to possess significant political
weight. The UN became universally hated as simply meaning "sanctions" to
Iraqi people, while the distribution network appears to have earned
respect as a necessary effort under the circumstance. To arrogantly
replace this network with some other would seem yet another hubristic
miscalculation, reflected in the Bush quotation elsewhere in the
article. "Pacify"?!

> U.S. military officials hope that Iraqi port workers will resume their
> duties. Harbor pilots will be needed to guide large merchant ships
> carrying aid up the Khor abd Allah waterway, which links the port to
> the northern Gulf and is difficult for big ships to navigate due to
> shoals and sunken vessels from the 1991 Gulf War. And they will need
> workers to unload cargo and operate the blue cranes that stick into
> the sky around the docks to meet their ambitious timetables.

And if these workers don't choose to "resume their duties," then what?
Will they be expected to do their jobs at gunpoint? Will the US "import"
workers to run the Iraqi economy? (I've been wondering these things
since I read the "Wolfowitz Cabal" article, proposing to take over Iraq,
seize the oilfields and pay for the war with the oil profits, published
in the New York Times shortly after 9/11/01.) After 12 years of
consciously creating grinding social conditions (and dropping frequent
bombs) and then after this war of conquest, will they really obtain a
stable social situation in Iraq?

Lastly, during the 1991 war the US deliberately targeted the electricity
supply, as well as water and sewage treatment facilities. Electricity
production was reduced to 4% of prewar levels. (Without electricity it
is impossible to cleanse either anyway.) This time, for some reason,
they have not targeted the electricity of Baghdad thus far. All the
reports I read assumed they would do so. Perhaps they simply expect to
run Iraq very soon and would not like to start rebuilding the
infrastructure completely from scratch. Perhaps in a cost/benefit
analysis humanitarian "rescue" becomes too high without these
fundamental resources. Perhaps their strategy can be directly attributed
to the strength of the international antiwar movement,-- in part since
we have the moral high ground they must argue for "humanitarian" war.
Perhaps they're worried that international law forbids targeting the
water supply, food supply, etc. (Hah!) Perhaps they have failed to
properly consider the political cost of a dead child's face on the front
of a violently ruined skull on televisions around the world. In that
sense we're seeing a globalization of the images from Vietnam. So
whatever the reason, a political contradiction now snares them --
articles and photographs flowing out of Iraq thanks to that very
electricity that they haven't yet bombed -- which in turn now makes it
harder for them create the kind of "collateral damage" that bombing will
cause.

(Yet they will do it. As Basra, without electricity or water, a city of
1 million people, will now be starved of water and food. For how long?
In Basra, which bore the brunt of the Iran-Iraq war and the Gulf War and
the No-Fly Zone bombings, epidemics may soon flare. Without food or
water, children and the elderly, already on the margin, will die.
Without restoration of basic services, lactating mothers will find
themselves clutching withering infants, the bitter fruit of imperialist
"humanitarian" war.)



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