American Children And Foreign Children:
Imagine Connecticut, Imagine Afghanistan, Iraq And
Palestine
26 December 2012
By Jacob G. Hornberger
If there is a more emotionally painful experience than
a parent's losing a child, I can't imagine what it
would be. The emotional wound is raw and goes down to
the deepest recesses of a person's heart and soul.
And as we see with the Connecticut massacre of all
those little children, it's not just the parents or
even just Connecticut residents, who feel the pain and
anguish over what has occurred. People all over the
country sympathize deeply with the pain being suffered
by the parents of those children.
What I find absolutely fascinating, however, is how so
many Americans have a totally different reaction when
it comes to the deaths of foreign children at the
hands of the U.S. national-security state. There is an
indifference and a callousness that defies credulity.
Yet, that mindset of indifference and callousness
doesn't seem to apply to deaths that occur from
natural causes. For example, when there are deaths of
foreign children that occur as a result of a tsunami
or hurricane, there is a tremendous outpouring of
sympathy and help among the American people. There is
also tremendous empathy for foreign families who lose
children at the hands of a private murderer, as we saw
in Norway.
But when the deaths occur as a result of some drone
strike, bomb, or sanctions at the hands of the U.S.
government, everything seems to shut down within
Americans. Sympathy and empathy disappear. People
don't want to hear the details. They do their best to
shut out any discussion of the episode. The attitude
is always, "Regrettable, but now it's time to move
on."
Why the difference?
As I argue in my current series, "The Evil of the
National Security State," in FFF's monthly journal,
Future of Freedom, the answer lies in what the
national-security state has done to the American
people. In the name of fighting communism and, later,
terrorism, it has warped their values and their
principles and stultified their consciences.
Ever since the enactment of the National Security Act
of 1947, the attitude has been that the
national-security state, especially the military and
the CIA, must do whatever is necessary to protect
"national security." If that means hiring Nazis to
help fight the Cold War, so be it. If it means illicit
drug experimentation on unknowing Americans, so be it.
If it means invading foreign lands without the
constitutionally required congressional declaration of
war, so be it. If it means assassinating foreign
leaders, so be it. If it means military coups in
foreign countries, so be it. If it means torture,
indefinite incarceration, secret prisons, and kangaroo
military tribunals, so be it. If it means
assassination of American citizens and foreigners, so
be it. If it means bombing wedding parties and funeral
processions, so be it. If it means killing children
with drones or sanctions, so be it.
Throughout the Cold War and then the "war on
terrorism," Americans have walked through the entire
process in what seems to be a state of extreme
numbness. All that has mattered has been "national
security," a term that has no real meaning at all and
is not even found in the Constitution. As long as
national security has been at stake, Americans have
chosen to defer to the authority of national-security
state officials. Conscience has been set aside for the
sake of national security.
One of the best examples of this phenomenon was with
respect to the Iraq sanctions. For 11 long years, the
U.S. national-security state maintained one of the
cruelest and most brutal systems of sanctions in
history against Iraq. Year after year, tens of
thousands of Iraqi children were dying from illnesses,
malnutrition, and disease.
The situation was made worse by what the
national-security state had done to Iraq during the
Persian Gulf War, a war that Congress never declared.
It had knowingly and intentionally destroyed Iraq's
water and sewage treatment plants with the specific
aim of spreading illnesses and diseases among the
Iraqi people. When the war was over, the sanctions
prevented those plants from being repaired.
Throughout those 11 years, there was very little
outpouring of outrage, anger, and indignation from the
American people. There were some groups and
individuals who spoke out against the horror but they
were few and far between. Most Americans were
indifferent to the massive, ever-increasing, death
toll.
Even when two high UN officials, Denis Halliday and
Hans von Sponeck, and Jutta Burghardt, head of the
World Food Program in Iraq, all stricken by
conscience, resigned their positions based on what was
being called a "genocide" in Iraq, Americans, by and
large, remained distant and detached. If the
national-security state said that Saddam Hussein had
to go, then that's all that mattered. National
security was everything.
There were Americans who chose to help the Iraqi
people by sending them or providing them with
medicines, money, or other such things. The
national-security state ended up going after them with
a vengeance. They included groups like Physicians for
Social Responsibility and Voices in the Wilderness and
individuals like Bert Sacks. National-security state
officials threatened them with fines. Just recently,
Sacks prevailed in the government's relentless crusade
against him in the federal courts to recover a $10,000
fine for helping the Iraqi people in violation of the
sanctions.
They were the lucky ones, however. American doctor
Rafil Dhafir is currently serving a 22-year jail
sentence for helping the Iraqi people in violation of
the sanctions. What precisely did he do? Send money to
Saddam Hussein? To al-Qaeda in Iraq? Nope. He sent
money to an Iraqi charity to help the Iraqi people.
Why a criminal prosecution against Dhafir and merely a
civil fine against Sacks? Perhaps the answer lies in
the radically different nature of the names and
national origin of the two.
Only a few Americans cared what happened to Dhafir,
Sacks, or anyone else who responded to the dictates of
his conscience by helping the Iraqi people deal with
the sanctions.
When U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine
Albright was asked in 1996 by "Sixty Minutes" whether
the deaths of half-a-million Iraqi children from the
sanctions were "worth it," she responded, "I think
this is a very hard choice, but the price — we think
the price is worth it."
Hardly anyone here in the United States batted an eye
at her statement. After all, she was the principal
spokesman for the U.S. national-security state. And
national security was everything. The sanctions
continued for another seven years.
The reaction was entirely different in the Middle
East. There, the deep emotional pain and anguish was
being suffered not only by Iraqi parents who were
losing their children, it was being felt by people all
over the Middle East, much as people all over the
United States are feeling the pain of losing those
children in Connecticut.
Imagine — year after year of watching children die,
needlessly. The anger ultimately boiled into rage,
which ultimately manifested itself in terrorism
against the United States. In fact, when Ramzi Yousef,
one of the terrorists who struck the World Trade
Center in 1993, appeared for sentencing, he angrily
pointed to the deaths of the Iraqi children from the
sanctions as one of the reasons for his terrorism. His
point about the sanctions would be repeated later by
Osama bin Laden.
Yet, when the 9/11 attacks occurred, many Americans
quickly accepted the explanation provided by
national-security state officials — that the anger and
rage that motivated the terrorists had nothing to do
with U.S. foreign policy. It was all about hatred for
America's "freedom and values." And when some of us
pointed to the sanctions and other acts of U.S.
interventionism as providing the motive behind the
terrorist strikes, supporters of the national-security
state responded with, "Oh, you're nothing but a
justifier! You're justifying the attacks!" They were
not even willing to entertain the possibility that
people in other parts of the world get just as angry
when children in their part of the world are killed as
Americans do when children in our part of the world
are killed. They simply did what they had been doing
their entire lives— defer to the judgment of the
national-security state.
After Saddam Hussein's infamous WMDs failed to
materialize, all to many Americans quickly accepted
the national-security state's alternative rationale
for invading and occupying Iraq — to help the Iraqi
people by bringing them "democracy." Of course, hardly
anyone asked U.S. officials to reconcile their
new-found love for the Iraqi people with their 11
years of brutal sanctions which brought death to
hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children.
How many deaths of Iraqi children would actually have
been worth regime change in Iraq? 100,000? 50,000?
10,000? 1,000? 100?
The answer is: None. The commandment does not say,
"Thou shalt not kill except for regime change or some
other political goal." It says, "Thou shalt not kill."
But under the principles of the national-security
state, God's laws were subordinated to national
security a long time ago. And in the name of national
security, all too many Americans have rendered their
conscience to the national-security state.
Jacob Hornberger
is founder and president of the Future of Freedom
Foundation.