Tag: Saddam Hussein

One million malnourished children (Liberate THIS, Part 4)

Posted on by kathiemm

[Note from Kathie Malley-Morrison:  Today we continue our series of excerpts from Dr. Dahlia Wasfi’s book.]

Most of my cousins were born after my immediate family left Iraq in 1977.  I had never met them, and I had only faint memories of aunts and uncles, as well as my paternal grandmother who had already passed away in 1979.

Child in Iraq war
Child victim of Iraq war (Image in public domain)

I knew I had many relatives suffering under desperate conditions in Iraq, but I was emotionally, as well as geographically, distant from their pain.  With English as my one and only language, I couldn’t speak with them on the phone even if U.S. and U.K. forces hadn’t bombed the telecommunications centers.

I condemned the hypocrisy of my government for starving the Iraqi people while claiming to punish Saddam Hussein.  But the hypocrisy I despised was within me.  I continued my life, business as usual, graduating in 1993, and moving on to medical school, with a sadness I could not explain.

Between 1991 and 1997, I finished my Bachelor’s degree at Swarthmore and earned my medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania.  During the same time period, economic sanctions achieved the chronic malnourishment of nearly 1,000,000 children in central and southern Iraq.[1]  According to Philippe Heffinck, then UNICEF Representative in Baghdad, “It is clear that children are bearing the brunt of the current economic hardship.”[2]  By the following year, the mortality rate of Iraqi children under five years old was a shocking 500,000 deaths higher than predicted since 1991.[3]

I knew these figures, but I didn’t have time to think about them.  I had begun a surgical residency, first at the University of Maryland, and then back at Penn for a year of research.  I was constantly working, ever more sleep-deprived, and miserable. Yet, I remained unconscious of the internal contradiction fueling my unhappiness.

After three grueling years, I believed that changing fields would bring me contentment.  I switched to a training program in anesthesiology at Georgetown University Hospital, where I began working in June 2000.  My experiences there would prove to be the final straw.

[1] http://www.unicef.org/newsline/97pr60.htm

[2] Ibid.

[3] http://www.unicef.org/newsline/99pr29.htm

Dr. Dahlia Wasfi

Shattering my world (Liberate THIS, Part 3)

Posted on by kathiemm

[Note by Kathie Malley-Morrison:  Today we are pleased to publish the third in our ongoing series from Dr. Dahlia Wasfi‘s book, Liberate THIS.]

The missiles that trailed across the Arabian night sky that January of 1991 fractured the calm over Iraq, like the war itself shattered my world and my memories to pieces.

Marine fighter planes during Iraq war
Marine fighter planes during Iraq war (Image in public domain)

There was no question that the regime of Saddam Hussein was politically repressive. But now, Iraqis suffered under brutality from within and aerial bombardment from without.

Iraqi families were under attack.  My fellow students were celebrating.

Yet, even though I had insight that no one else could have, I said and did nothing for our victims.  At the time, assimilation was a higher priority for me than speaking the truth.  I reeked of selling out.

More than 100,000 Iraqis perished during the 42 days of Gulf War I, but I was lucky.  My blood relatives survived. The worst was yet to come, however, because our aerial assaults had purposely targeted Iraq’s electricity plants, telecommunication centers, and water treatment facilities.  These attacks were in direct violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the protection of civilians in war[1].

In a matter of days, life became desperate. There was no potable water, no electricity, and with economic sanctions in place, there soon would be no means of rebuilding.

Severe economic sanctions had been imposed on Iraq four days after Iraqi troops entered Kuwait, on August 6, 1990.  (In sad irony, that date was the forty-five year anniversary of another Western targeting of a civilian population, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan.)  All of Iraq’s exports and imports were banned in order to induce Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait.[2]

Though withdrawal was completed by the end of the 1991 Gulf War in April, those brutal sanctions remained in place for years.  Once stored resources were depleted, Iraqis began to starve.  It was a stringent medical, cultural, intellectual, and nutritional embargo that victimized the already-suffering Iraqi people.

I knew the direct correlation between my government’s actions and human suffering.  I did nothing.

Dahlia Wasfi

[1] http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/INTRO/380  Convention (IV) relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War. Geneva, 12 August 1949.

[2] Herring, Eric.  “Between Iraq and a Hard Place:  A Critique of the Case for UN Economic Sanctions” in Falk, Richard, Irene Gendzier, and Robert Jay Lifton, eds.  Crimes of War:  Iraq. Avalon Publishing Group, Inc.  New York, NY.  2006. p .223.

 

Values and rhetoric: Lakovian framing, metaphors and stories

Posted on by kathiemm


George Lakoff, like Albert Bandura, analyzes the ways that people frame deadly behaviors to give them the trappings of morality. On August 26, 2010, our blog introduced Lakoff’s work; today we continue that exploration.

According to Lakoff, both liberals and conservatives use linguistic techniques, such as metaphors, storytelling, and framing, to justify political views.  For example, people often conceptualize nations as persons or even families, referring to their “founding fathers” or their “homeland,” or equating Iraq with Saddam Hussein. This nation-as-person metaphor presumes that there are :

  • “Adult nations” (those that are “mature” and industrialized)
  • “Nation-children,” which are industrializing and have moral standards but may need guidance, and
  • Backward nations, which are underdeveloped, in need of morals, and must be taught a lesson.

Many people justify invasions of other countries through what Lakoff labels the self-defense and rescue stories, each of which involves a blameless victim country, an inherently evil villain country, and a hero country:

  • In the self-defense story, the villain nation commits a crime against the victim nation, and the victim fights the villain off, thus becoming a hero.
  • In the rescue story, the villain threatens or attacks the victim, and the hero comes in and defeats the villain, thereby saving the victim.

Other people justify invading another country by using fear-instilling stock phrases such as “terrorist” or euphemisms designed to make inhumane actions seem sterile or even desirable—e.g., calling invasion a “military operation” as though it were something clean and sterile.

What other stories can you think of that people tell each other to justify aggression, including torture,  by their governments?

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology (with thanks to Tristyn Campbell for contributing to this post)

Blaming the victim (Moral disengagement, part 8)

Posted on by kathiemm
President Bush addressing the U.N.
George Bush addressing U.N. (Photo in public domain; from Wikimedia Commons)

Blaming the victim is a common form of moral disengagement when nations go to war or try to persuade their citizens to go along with an unpopular war.

There are countless examples of the Bush White House arguing that Saddam Hussein was forcing the United States to go to war against Iraq. For example, President George W. Bush, in a speech to the UN on September 13,  2002, argued that “By breaking every pledge, by his deceptions and by his cruelties, Saddam Hussein has made the case against himself.”

Secretary of State Colin Powell, in a February 6, 2002 briefing to the UN Security Council, continued placing the blame for the upcoming invasion of Iraq on Saddam Hussein: “We must not fail in our duty and our responsibilities. Clearly, Saddam will stop at nothing until something stops him.”

It is not only the people in power who blame the victims of violence for the violence against them. Good examples can be seen in online responses to a video, available from Wikileaks, showing American military personnel killing Reuters reporters and Iraq civilians, and wounding two children.

  • “They (the Reuters personnel) got themselves killed because they were out of their element, why were they with the enemy??”
  • “As far as the kids go the pilot said it best, they should not have brought children to a battle. Maybe their value of life is just as low if they are willing to bring children.”

What examples of blaming the victim do you hear in your own conversations or see in the media?

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

Note: This post was adapted from my previously published article in Peace Psychology (a publication of the American Psychological Association), Spring, 2009.