Invisible War: The United States and the Iraq Sanctions Paperback – April 2, 2012

For years I hoped that someone would write such a scholarly and well referenced book as this, and it has exceeded my expectations. Meticulously assembled from available sources, including interviews, this book should serve as a starting point for anyone attempting to understand how such a tragedy could have been inflicted and why. The brutality of those 13 years are virtually forgotten, bracketed by over a decade of warfare and destruction before and after. But this additional sad chapter of Iraqi history covers yet another type of war, as the title suggests, and any Iraqi born after 1980 has lived in a country experiencing virtually continuous war. Personally, I lived in Canada during the 1990s, with relatives in Iraq. I thought of them and their suffering every time I put food in my mouth and felt both shame and helplessness. This book helped me understand how the United Nations works, in particular the pernicious flaws of the Security Council, the role of the Iraqi regime, and insight into the heartless policy mercilessly advanced by the American regime. That the sanctions did not achieve their stated goals is a separate topic, the population suffered and the regime's control of them was strengthened. But the idea of such sanctions on any country should be viewed as the modern equivalent of a medieval siege and should have no place in the modern world.

This is an important read for anyone that is interested in the region or International Affairs. The author is very detailed and uses well sighted evidence to show just how barbaric the sanctions regime was. Despite being seen as the more humane option, it destroyed an entire generation of people. You take away from this book not only an understanding of the sanctions in Iraq, but a clearer thinking process to gauge the benignity of todays affairs, from P2P in Libya to the developing disaster in Syria. But be prepared, if you have any humanity in you that is, you will find yourself fighting to hold back tears as you read through the chapters.

Quite possibly one of the best nonfiction books I've read. It is quite archival which may turn some off but that means that its filled with great information

Excellent succinct and powerful look into an overlooked but crucial part of US history and involvement in Iraq that is more relevant than ever today.

Excellent.

This may be the most important book published this year about American foreign policy. Jo Gordon`s meticulous research provides a detailed account of how the United States manipulated and controlled the creation and administration of brutal sanctions against Iraq between 1990 and 2003 that according to most credible accounts resulted in the deaths of at least 500,000 innocent children under 5 years old. I can`t imagine a more important book for American citizens to read in order to understand the way their country really operates in the world.The evidence does not suggest that American officials intended to kill masses of innocent Iraqi children, but that they were coldly indifferent to the collateral damage caused by their actions. They wanted to totally defang Saddam Hussein and force regime change, even though this was never a stated aim of the sanctions, and simply ignored and suppressed overwhelming evidence of the immense humanitarian damage they were causing. A series of senior career UN humanitarian officials working in Iraq resigned in protest at the carnage the sanctions policy was creating. Gordon`s book is particularly valuable because she is able to reconstruct how US officials cleverly and amorally used bribes, threats and inducements to win UN Security Council approval of the extreme sanctions regime in the first place and then to control it for the next 13 years. Yemen, one of only two countries to vote against the program had all its American foreign aid cut off three days later, for example. The Russians, the Chinese and many elected member states of the Security Council at the time received concessions or bribes to win their approval. Gordon also shows how American officials lobbied to create a system in which any of the 15 permanent and temporary members of the SC could veto any contract to bring in desperately needed humanitarian aid, and then repeatedly used its own veto to place holds on billions of dollars worth of contracts, often without providing any explanation, in an obvious attempt to keep Iraq, which they had bombed back to the stone age in 1991, unable to repair its decimated infrastructure, most significantly its destroyed electricity grids and its water treatment capacity, leading to a series of deadly epidemics, as well as widespread malnutrition and anemia. If you love your country this book will make you angry and ashamed of the behavior of both Republican and Democratic administrations responsible for what can fairly be called a genocide. When you combine this information with American financial, military and logistical support for Saddam`s 8-year war against Iran in the 1980s, even after he used chemical weapons against the Iranians and his own people, the Kurds, plus the illegal and immoral invasion and occupation of Iraq that began in 2003 and still continues, you will no longer wonder why they hate the United States.

What can possibly sound more benign than "economic sanctions" when talking about a means of projecting national will on another nation? Certainly not "carpet bombing" or "shock and awe". Yet it's possible that the casualties inflicted on Iraq by US-led sanctions caused more death and misery than both military campaigns waged by two Bush Administrations, and an occupation that continues under President Obama. If economic sanctions were a form of taxation, they would be labeled regressive: they hit hardest those who can least afford them. Indeed, it is possible that in excess of half a million Iraqi children died as a result of economic sanctions. In her new book, Professor Gordon leaves no shred of evidence unexamined and amasses an unparalleled body of proof that economic sanctions are every bit as terrible as conventional weapons yet unlike those weapons, they are aimed not at military targets, but at the greater civilian population, and it is that population which endures unimaginable suffering, suffering which inflicted by the military would result in international calls for war crimes tribunals. Instead, this silent, deadly force stayed below the radar of all but the most diligent reporters and analysts and was ignored by the world while a once-functioning nation was ground to near destruction.

Prepare to have your head beaten into the doctrinaire pavement upon which this author’s argument treads. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Joy Gordon beschreibt sehr detailliert jede Facette der in den neunziger Jahren von den UN gegen den Irak verhängten Sanktionen. Dabei ist sie um Neutralität bemüht, scheut sich jedoch nicht, die Vereinigten Staaten als die treibende Kraft hinter der Aufrechterhaltung der Sanktionen zu benennen. Obwohl schon bald offensichtlich wurde, dass die wirtschaftlichen Sanktionen das Importland Irak in eine humanitäre Katastrophe stürzten, blockierten die USA, bisweilen mit Unterstützung von Großbritannien, auch Importe des Irak in den Bereichen Trinkwasserreinigung, Abwasserentsorgung, Medizin, Landwirtschaft usw unter teils abenteuerlichen Vorwänden: Aus Impfstoffen für Kinder könnten Viren zum Zwecke der Herstellung von biologischen Kampfstoffen extrahiert werden etc. Die Wirtschaft des Irak wurde systematisch stranguliert, so dass die Bevölkerung verarmte und sich die Güter, die schließlich doch importiert werden durften, ohnehin nicht leisten konnte. Der Staat selbst hatte keine legale Einkommenquelle mehr, was bei einem sozialistischen Zentralstaat denkbar katastrophale Folgen nach sich zog. Ein großer Teil gewöhnlicher Industriegüter kann zu militärischen Zwecken umfunktioniert werden (Glas, Nägel, medizinische Kühlfahrzeuge etc), weswegen die Einfuhr vieler Güter, ohne die ein Wiederaufbau der nach dem Golfkrieg zerstörten Infrastruktur nicht möglich war, dem Irak versagt wurden. Dabei war die Gefahr, der Irak könne diese Dual-Use-Güter zur Herstellung von WMD verwenden, aufgrund der Verarmung des Staates ohnehin nicht groß - mit anderen Worten: Der Irak hatte andere Probleme, um die er sich zu kümmern hatte.Joy Gordons Recherchen sind auch deshalb so wichtig, da dieses Thema, also die Auswirkungen der wirtschaftlichen Sanktionen im Irak, in Europa und Amerika kaum bekannt sind.