Speaking to a packed house in King 306 on Saturday, March 8, Benjamin Joffe-Walt told of his experiences with Human Shields and gave his perspective on the past ten years of U.S. interaction with the Iraqi people and administration.
Joffe-Walt spoke mainly about how American sanctions have affected Iraq, and about how the American bombing campaign affected Iraqi civilians.
The message? If you think this war sounds bad, just wait for the next one.
“I don’t trust the U.S. government,” he said. “I don’t think anything just is going to come from a war that is perpetrated for unjust reasons.”
Just as the last war caused widespread suffering in Iraq, Joffe-Walt argued, the looming war may prove even worse.
“I just want to give a plea about the war that is about to go on,” Joffe-Walt said.
“So far, $95 million has been spent to send weapons and troops for the war plan that now exists. This money could have been used to feed Iraqis and buy medical drugs for decades,” he said.
The first Gulf War and the following decade of sanctions have produced a humanitarian crisis in Iraq, Joffe-Walt asserted — contrary to American authorities’ claims that Saddam’s corrupt regime, not the American sanctions, have deprived the Iraqi population.
To begin with, the American bombing campaign destroyed water sanitation plants, Joffe-Walt said, causing an epidemic of diarrhea and subsequent deaths from dehydration.
“When you hear statistics like, 750,000 children have died as a result of the sanctions, 75 percent of those deaths have been of dehydration,” he said. “When you get diarrhea, you get very dehydrated. But when you get diarrhea from the water, you can’t drink the water again.”
Depleted uranium munitions, used by the allies in the first Gulf War, caused a wave of cancer, birth defects and other illnesses due to radiation, Joffe-Walt said.
“It turns out depleted uranium is a great anti-tank munition,” he said, “and it’s not toxic if you just walk by it. But if it gets inside your body, it can cause severe health problems. Now it’s in the soil, in the air, in the water, all over northern Kuwait and Southern Iraq.”
In the event of a crisis, the United Nations “predicts that one and a quarter million people would be at risk of death from malnutrition,” he said, “and only 39 percent of the country would have access to water. The UN estimates around one and a half million refugees, at least 500,000 direct or indirect casualties and three million people at nutritional risk.”
“America’s top military advisors gave a briefing two days ago about what the war,” Joffe-Walt said. “They want to create a ‘shock war’ this time. In the last war, 6,000 bombs were dropped in the 43 days of the Gulf War campaign. They now plan to drop 3000 bombs and missiles within the first 48 hours of the coming war.”