The Cruel Jest of American “Humanitarian Aid” to Iraq

[unhappycamper]

http://www.juancole.com/2014/08/cruel-american-humanitarian.html

The Cruel Jest of American “Humanitarian Aid” to Iraq
By Juan Cole | Aug. 10, 2014

The United States of America has no claim on the language of “humanitarian aid” to Iraq after what it did to that country. It is rather as though Washington should send Meals Ready to Eat to the good people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. One is happy that the US has dropped food aid for the Yezidis trapped on a mountain after they escaped the so-called “Islamic State” of self-styled “caliph” Ibrahim. But the US press either has a short memory or is being disingenuous when they talk about a humanitarian mission in Iraq!

The US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the subsequent 8-year military Occupation of that country caused over one million Iraqis to be displaced abroad, especially to Syria and Jordan, but some of them got to Sweden and a few to the US itself.

~snip~

How many Iraqis died because of the US invasion, i.e. the extra mortality rate, is hard to estimate. But likely it was at least 300,000 persons. Typically wounded in war are three times as many as the killed, so that would give us nearly 1 million wounded. Most of the 300,000 who died were men, many of them with families, and in Iraq there were few or no insurance policies. That left 300,000 or so widows and likely 1.5 million orphans.

“Humanitarian mission” may sound good to American ears. But there is no way a few food drops can make up for what the US did to Iraq.