The most concise and devastating piece yet on the alternative to war against Saddam appeared in the Washington Post yesterday. If you haven’t yet read it, do so now. Here’s the money quote from Walter Russell Meade:
Sanctions are inevitably the cornerstone of containment, and in Iraq, sanctions kill. In this case, containment is not an alternative to war. Containment is war: a slow, grinding war in which the only certainty is that hundreds of thousands of civilians will die. The Gulf War killed somewhere between 21,000 and 35,000 Iraqis, of whom between 1,000 and 5,000 were civilians. Based on Iraqi government figures, UNICEF estimates that containment kills roughly 5,000 Iraqi babies (children under 5 years of age) every month, or 60,000 per year. Other estimates are lower, but by any reasonable estimate containment kills about as many people every year as the Gulf War – and almost all the victims of containment are civilian, and two-thirds are children under 5. Each year of containment is a new Gulf War. Saddam Hussein is 65; containing him for another 10 years condemns at least another 360,000 Iraqis to death. Of these, 240,000 will be children under 5.
That’s the difference between the French and much of the American “peace” movement. The French are at least candid about their hope that a pretense of disarmament could lead to renewed trade with Saddam. The more legit peace protestors, when they occasionally diverge from haranguing the evils of America, presumably want the sanctions maintained. That’s neither justice nor peace.
The Dish 