Letters

From the June 2002 issue

(Page 2 of 3)

The fact is that George Herbert Walker Bush manufactured Desert Storm in a doomed attempt to rescue his administration from the political consequences of his tax flip-flop. Bush failed. Now his son is attempting to impose a state of permanent war on America, all the while laying down the foundation of a police state.

Whether American policies have led to the deaths of 100,000 Iraqi children or 600,000 is immaterial. It is time for Imperial America to withdraw its legions and dismantle its empire.

Frank Brady
Via e-mail

Who deserves to be dealt with most harshly: criminals who murder hundreds of thousands of children, people who absolve the criminals of any wrongdoing and applaud them for their actions, or people who exaggerate the number of victims?

Judging from Matt Welch's piece, his answer would be number three. He refers to the "anti-sanctions rabble" as "loonies" who have made "hysterical" claims about the impact of the sanctions.

As for the people who aggressively advocate policies that kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people, he writes, "Sanctions proponents, if they are not careful, run the risk of aping the foolish debate tactics of the critics they condemn." Boy, that's telling them. Too bad he used up all his venom on the "rabble."

To "loonies" like me a much more appropriate statement would be, "Sanctions proponents are accomplices to mass murder." That is what we would say of people who advocated policies that killed hundreds of thousands of American children. Such policies could be justified only if an overwhelmingly strong case was made that more lives would be lost if they weren't implemented and that no other options were available. If such a case exists Welch certainly hasn't presented it, nor has anyone else.

Welch quibbles that the deaths are not due just to the sanctions but also to the impact of the war. Yet who bombed Iraq back to the Stone Age? Weren't most of the "rabble" he ridicules opposing that war while mainstream pundits were raving about smart bombs? Moreover, sanctions opponents have pointed out that people are dying due to both the sanctions and the destruction of the Gulf War.

The most accurate and careful estimate of the number of victims doesn't help anyone if people are too cowardly to call murderers what they are. I hope Welch will one day find the courage to do so. Until then he won't be of much use at all to innocent Iraqis. They are much better served by the "rabble."

Joe Emersberger
Via e-mail

Matt Welch's "The Politics of Dead Children" compelled me to write. I just wanted to compliment him on a nice job. I am used to the attitude that the truth need not get in the way of a good political position, so I really appreciate that he's taken time to defuse the inaccuracies, exaggerations, and ignorance of people unwilling to sift through the information that's there and make an assessment that recognizes both the facts and the accompanying uncertainty that is inherent in figures such as the ones Welch describes.

I hold a master's degree in critical and creative thinking. I'm embarrassed but not surprised that Robert Jensen, the professor who says he teaches the subject, is a zealous practitioner of "weak-sense" critical thinking. That's the practice of finding evidence to support already-formed opinions and ideas, as opposed to collecting information that might either confirm or not confirm an idea or opinion held as a hypothesis. My experience is that the former practice predominates.

Brian Keegan
Attleboro, MA

Matt Welch's article as a whole was well reasoned and well presented. But I didn't see how his numbers added up.

The highest total mortality rate he quotes is 130.6 per 100,000 births. This is roughly 1 in 1,000 mortality. In order to get 100,000 children dead, then, one would need 100 million children to be born.

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