Sanctions are an act of war!
Speech given by Anti-War Committee member Misty Rowan on October 9th at the MN Peace Action Coalition Protest in Minneapolis
Hello, my name is Misty Rowan and I am with the Anti War Committee. Now, obviously, being that we are the Anti war committee means we are opposed to ALL US wars and occupations. 20 years in Afghanistan is certainly a bleak anniversary, especially since the sum total of our efforts there seem to have caused nothing but death, and destabilization, and all at an astronomical tax-payer expense. The only real winners of the war on Afghanistan are the war profiteers and the politicians that use fear to get elected. So no, I am no fan of war, and I’m glad to see it over, or at least that chapter ended. But that good news comes with a warning.
You see, I want to talk to you about a different tactic of the military industrial complex. And that is the use of sanctions. As the war on terror drags on it into its third decade, it has never been less popular. People are tired of it. And with the ongoing pandemic and it’s economic fallout, among other long-standing social issues coming to a head right here at home, people are not interested in the same old excuses used to justify these wars abroad. And as the war machine continues to try and sell itself to the general public despite it’s failures, sanctions have begun to be seen as a more humane alternative to an outright war.
But I am here to tell you that that is wrong. Sanctions are an act of war, and they need to be treated as such. They are cruel, and they are intended to cause harm, but unlike a drone strike, the damage done is so much more insidious than outright violence, and for that reason, so much less likely to make the nightly news. Sanctions are used to strangle countries economically and to put pressure on governments, but it is the ordinary people who ultimately pay the price. It is well documented that sanctions can cause more death and more suffering than an actual hot war, but they are sold to us as being less cruel, and more cost-effective.
You see, when one army fights another army, there are casualties on both sides. But when you starve a nation, and prevent them from being able to help themselves, the losses are all theirs. The violence is more pernicious and the blame is harder to assign. Sanctions put the squeeze on things like medical supplies, water treatment chemicals, and food, which is meant to cause suffering, and death. And I don’t think that intentionally starving people to death should not be considered less cruel than a bullet.
Sanctions kill children. They kill the innocent. It is a form of collective punishment and the ones who suffer the most are the poorest, the oldest and the youngest, and the most vulnerable among a population. Imagine doing anything that increases the difficulty of people accessing food and medical care, especially during a global pandemic, and still thinking you can still brand yourself as the kinder, gentler version of Imperialism. But that’s what the democrats in charge now would like you to believe. Biden wants you to know that everything is back to normal again, now that he’s in office, go back to sleep, go out to brunch. It’s taken care of. Nevermind that Biden has chosen to keep many of Trump’s cruelest and most spiteful sanctions in place. Nevermind that it’s clear that he has a military agenda of his own. It’s so much easier to stomach when the guy saying it is a professional politician, right?
It is amazing to me how the US military will rinse and reuse the same tired excuses to go to war, how they continue to cry “Humanitarian crisis” as the justification to invade, but at the same time they are creating that crisis in the first place so as to always have the excuse! If the US politicians were actually interested in helping people, if they were concerned about human rights abuses, or the living conditions of people in Afghanistan or Iran or Venezuela, they could help by sending aid, instead of interfering with things like access to clean water. But helping people isn’t really the point, it’s just the window dressing. In the end, the US military agenda is focused on it’s own interests, and the rights of Muslim women, or the infant mortality rates in other parts of the world have never been among them.
Calling sanctions an alternative to war is like calling a rubber bullet “less-than-lethal” in order to justify using them on civilians at point blank range. Which, of course, the US has also repeatedly done. And which also results in death and/or lifelong injuries. We must respond to both by seeing them clearly for what they are. Acts of aggression that have lethal consequences.
And we cannot allow this to continue. Our government must be held accountable for its actions in Afghanistan, and we must prevent them from imposing further cruelty. Starving children in other parts of the world does not make you or I any safer. Our government needs to focus on the problems we are facing here at home, like addressing the humanitarian crisis that is police violence and racial inequality. We need economic policy that will help people, not corporations, recover from the impact of this pandemic. We need housing, jobs and education opportunities. We need to act immediately to address climate change. But what we absolutely do not need is more war crimes being carried out in our name. It’s time to end the war on terror for good and that includes ending tactics like sanctions that do the same damage but do it quietly. We need to be that much louder in our opposition. When we say no to war, we mean all acts of war, sanctions included.
When the people of Afghanistan are under attack, what do we do?