[Peace-discuss] Starvation Sanctions Are Worse Than Overt Warfare

Sun Jun 23 07:18:09 UTC 2019

So here's an idea on this that I have been pitching to Congressional staff.
Let's try to spread this idea around.

Sometime in July the NDAA [National Defense Authorization Act, generally
seen as a "must-pass bill" because it "funds the troops"] is expected to
hit the House floor. Before that, it will go to the Rules Committee, where
amendments will be offered.

Let's agitate that an amendment be offered that limits broad economic
sanctions in some modest way, in order to try to force a vote on the House
floor on profligate economic sanctions that are hurting civilians.

Such as: trying to limit such sanctions so that they protect access to food
and medicine, as required by international law.

Or: trying to limit the President's unilateral power to impose economic
sanctions by declaring an "emergency."

===

Robert Reuel Naiman
Policy Director
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
naiman at justforeignpolicy.org
(202) 448-2898 x1

On Sat, Jun 22, 2019 at 8:49 PM C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss <
peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:

>
>
> New post on *Caitlin Johnstone*
> <https://caitlinjohnstone.com/?author=2> Starvation Sanctions Are Worse
> Than Overt Warfare
> <https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/06/23/starvation-sanctions-are-worse-than-overt-warfare/>
> by Caitlin Johnstone <https://caitlinjohnstone.com/?author=2>
>
> "We are putting major additional Sanctions on Iran on Monday," President
> Trump tweeted
> <https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1142506680300789761>today. "I
> look forward to the day that Sanctions come off Iran, and they become a
> productive and prosperous nation again - The sooner the better!"
>
> Iran's economy is already floundering <http://archive.is/5bioz> due to
> the steadily mounting sanctions
> <https://www.reuters.com/article/us-oil-iran-exports/irans-oil-exports-hit-new-2019-low-so-far-in-april-sources-idUSKCN1RS1I9>
>  that the Trump administration has been heaping upon it since its
> withdrawal from the JCPOA last year. Crucial goods are four times the price
> they used to be, sick Iranians are having difficulty obtaining
> life-saving medicine
> <https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-21/trump-s-sanctions-are-proving-a-bitter-pill-for-iran-s-sick>,
> and life in general has been getting much more difficult
> <https://theconversation.com/us-is-already-fighting-a-conflict-with-iran-an-economic-war-that-is-hurting-the-wrong-people-117568>
>  for the poorest and frailest Iranian civilians
> <https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2018/11/01/us-blames-iran-for-starving-civilians-while-prepping-further-sanctions/>
> .
>
> For this reason, it is a very safe bet that there have been Iranians who
> have died because of the sanctions. Being unable to obtain enough
> life-saving medicine will inevitably increase mortality rates, as will
> inadequate nutrition and care for those whose health is at risk. There's
> not really any way around that, and it's only going to get worse.
>
> And that's exactly what was supposed to happen. As far as their intended
> purpose is concerned, the sanctions are working. They're doing exactly what
> they were intended to do: hurt Iranian civilians.
>
> How do I know this? Well for one thing America's Secretary of State has
> said it openly. *The New York Times* reports the following
> <http://archive.is/P19nn#selection-639.0-647.166>:
>
> Last week, Mr. Pompeo acknowledged to Michael J. Morrell, a former acting
> director of the C.I.A., that the administration’s strategy would not
> persuade Iranian leaders to change their behavior.
>
> “I think what can change is the people can change the government,” he said
> on a podcast hosted by Mr. Morrell, in what appeared to be an endorsement
> of regime change.
>
> The Trump administration isn't leveling these sanctions because it
> believes they'll cause Tehran to capitulate to Washington's impossible
> list of demands
> <https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/05/pompeos-new-iran-strategy-regime-change-in-all-but-name.html>;
> they know full well that that will never happen. What they claim, based on
> no evidence or historical precedent whatsoever, is that by making life so
> painful for the hungry and malnourished Iranian people they'll be forced to
> rise up against their government to effect regime change themselves.
>
> Can you think of anything more sociopathic than this? Off the top of my
> head, I personally cannot.
>
> ....Death to America. I terminated deal, which was not even ratified by
> Congress, and imposed strong sanctions. They are a much weakened nation
> today than at the beginning of my Presidency, when they were causing major
> problems throughout the Middle East. Now they are Bust!....
>
> — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 21, 2019
> <https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1142055383193804801?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>
>
> Starvation sanctions kill people. Tens of thousands of Venezuelans have
> reportedly already died
> <http://inthesetimes.com/article/21913/venezuela-iran-iraq-sanctions-donald-trump-civilians-south-africa-palestine>
>  as a result of this administration's relentless assault on their
> economy; those human beings are no less dead than they would have been if
> the US had killed them by dropping cluster bombs on Caracas. Yet these
> deaths have received virtually no mainstream media coverage, and Americans,
> while they strongly oppose attacking Iran militarily
> <https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/mkt/12/658/652/2019%20Reuters%20Tracking%20-%20Iran%20Poll%2005%2020%202019.pdf>,
> have had very little to say about Trump's attacks on the nation's economy.
> The economy which people use to feed their children, to care for their
> elderly and their sick.
>
> I'm titling this essay "Starvation Sanctions Are Worse Than
> Overt Warfare", and I mean it. I am not saying that starvation sanctions
> are more destructive or deadly than overt military force in and of
> themselves; what I am saying is that the overall effect is worse, because
> there's no public accountability for them and because they deliberately
> target civilians.
>
> If the US were to launch a barrage of Tomahawk missiles into an Iranian
> suburb with the goal of killing civilians, there'd be international outrage
> and the cohesion of the US-centralized power alliance would take a major
> hit. Virtually everyone would recognize this as an unforgivable war crime.
> Yet America will be able to kill the same number of civilians with the same
> deliberate intention of inflicting deadly force, and it would suffer
> essentially no consequences at all. There's no public or international
> pressure holding that form of violence at bay, because it's invisible and
> poorly understood.
>
> It reminds me of the way financial abuse gets overlooked and
> under-appreciated in our society. Financial abuse can be more painful and
> imprisoning than physical or psychological abuse (and I speak from
> experience), especially if you have children, yet you don't generally see
> movies and TV shows getting made about it. In a society where people have
> been made to depend on money for survival, limiting or cutting off their
> access to it is the same as any other violent attack upon their personal
> sovereignty, and can easily be just as destructive. But as a society we
> haven't yet learned to see and understand this violence, so it doesn't
> attract interest and attention. That lack of interest and attention enables
> the empire to launch deadly campaigns targeting civilian populations
> unnoticed, without any public accountability.
>
> What does is say about MSM that Fox News is the only MSM outlet to have
> covered the @ceprdc <https://twitter.com/ceprdc?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw> study
> showing that US sanctions have killed 40,000 Venezuelans? NYT, WaPo, MSNBC
> and CNN have all ignored it and promoted murderous sanctions and regime
> change. https://t.co/RLqfaIK166
>
> — Dan Cohen (@dancohen3000) May 8, 2019
> <https://twitter.com/dancohen3000/status/1126102547683586049?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>
>
> We must as a society evolve our understanding of what sanctions are and
> what they do, and stop seeing them as in any way superior or preferable to
> overt warfare.
>
> The fact that people generally oppose senseless military violence but are
> unable to see and comprehend a slow, boa constrictor-like act of slaughter
> via economic strangulation is why these siege warfare tactics have become
> the weapon of choice for the US-centralized empire. It is a more gradual
> way of murdering people than overt warfare, but when you control all the
> resources and have an underlying power structure which maintains itself
> amid the comings and goings of your officially elected government, you're
> in no hurry. The absence of any public accountability makes the need for
> patience a very worthwhile trade-off.
>
> So you see this siege warfare strategy employed everywhere by the
> US-centralized empire:
>
>    - You see it with Iran and Venezuela.
>    - You see it in Yemen, where in addition to deadly blockades the
>    Saudis have been deliberate targeting
>    <https://web.archive.org/web/20181213114509/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/12/bombed-into-famine-how-saudi-air-campaign-targets-yemens-food-supplies> farms,
>    fishing boats, marketplaces, food storage sites and cholera treatment
>    centers
>    <https://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/the-u-s-enables-deliberate-saudi-attacks-on-civilian-targets-in-yemen/> with
>    US-assisted airstrikes.
>    - You see it in North Korea, where boats full of dead people have been
>    washing up on Japan's shores
>    <https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2018/01/21/beware-the-smiling-face-of-establishment-politics/>
>     because fishermen get stuck out at sea trying to catch food since
>    they can't afford enough fuel to get back to shore, which former Secretary
>    of State Rex Tillerson attributed to US sanctions
>    <https://youtu.be/y30DvEpKBYk?t=1115>.
>    - You see it in Gaza, where people are being deprived of an adequate
>    amount of nutrients
>    <https://electronicintifada.net/content/israels-starvation-diet-gaza/11810>
>     due to an Israeli blockade designed to "put the Palestinians on a
>    diet".
>    - You saw it with Julian Assange
>    <https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/the-persecution-of-assange-proves-him-right-2686c01c9a77>,
>    where Ecuador collaborated with the US to slowly make life in the embassy
>    more and more hellish in the hope that he'd step outside to be arrested by
>    British police.
>    - You're seeing it now with Chelsea Manning
>    <https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/pause-a-moment-and-think-about-how-many-people-arent-whistleblowing-c5890c40f943>,
>    who is currently racking up $500 a day fines for her principled stand
>    against a corrupt grand jury proceeding against Assange, fines which will
>    double next month to $1,000 a day.
>
> The US-centralized power alliance is so powerful in its ability to hurt
> nations with financial influence that in 1990 when Yemen voted against a UN
> Security Council Resolution authorizing the attack against Iran, a senior
> US diplomat was caught on a hot mic telling the Yemeni ambassador, "That
> will be the most expensive 'no' vote you ever cast." According to German
> author Thomas Pogge
> <https://books.google.com.au/books?id=CU3BLFqX1bQC&pg=PT169&lpg=PT169&dq=%22That+will+be+the+most+expensive+%27no%27+vote+you+ever+cast.%22&source=bl&ots=k-txlwJDxb&sig=ACfU3U14ZrULTDUIXBM3GOdZ2p7Af6udhg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwivw-DS0_ziAhUYX30KHQf-A0YQ6AEwAHoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22That%20will%20be%20the%20most%20expensive%20'no'%20vote%20you%20ever%20cast.%22&f=false>,
> "The US stopped $70 million in aid to Yemen; other Western countries, the
> IMF, and World Bank followed suit. Saudi Arabia expelled some 800,000
> Yemeni workers, many of whom had lived there for years and were sending
> urgently needed money to their families."
>
> That's real power. Not the ability to destroy a nation with bombs and
> missiles, but the ability to destroy it without firing a shot.
>
> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RM0uvgHKZe8>
>
> It's no wonder, then, that the drivers of this empire work so hard to
> continue growing and expanding it. The oligarchs and their allies in opaque
> government agencies no doubt envision a world where all noncompliant
> nations like Iran, Russia and China have been absorbed into the blob of
> empire and war becomes obsolete, not because anyone has become any less
> violent, but because their economic control will be so complete that they
> can obliterate entire populations just by cutting them off from the world
> economy whenever any of them become disobedient.
>
> This is the only reason Iran is being targeted right now. That's why
> you'll never hear a factually and logically sound argument defending
> Trump's withdrawal from the nuclear deal; there is none. There was no
> problem with the JCPOA other than the fact that it barred America from
> inflicting economic warfare upon Iran, which it needed for the purpose of
> toppling the nation's government so that it can be absorbed into the blob
> of the US-centralized empire.
>
> And all the innocent human beings who die of starvation and disease? They
> don't matter. Imperial violence only matters if there are consequences for
> it. The price of shoring up the total hegemony of the empire will have been
>  worth it <https://youtu.be/RM0uvgHKZe8>.
>
> _______________________________
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> *Caitlin Johnstone <https://caitlinjohnstone.com/?author=2>* | June 23,
> 2019 at 1:29 am | Tags: #Trump
> <https://caitlinjohnstone.com/?taxonomy=post_tag&term=trump>, caitlin
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