Iraq: Mass Extermination Achieved as Intended

August, 1999

From the beginnings of U.S. war planning against Iraq, the war's aim was the symbolic punishment of Iraq through mass extermination and re-underdevelopment. The military and political strategy achieved its aims as intended. The most important evidence to support this claim is simple and practical. The survival of the government and dying of Iraqi people are facts. From there we can ask about intentions of the main actors.

Did they expect a different outcome of their measures?

It was obvious to anyone, who wanted to know about it, that the destruction of basic Iraqi infrastructure, production facilities and supplies, combined with a trade blockade, would kill hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq.

Could they expect an overthrow of the Iraqi government?

Every Iraqi knows, that their suffering was caused and is maintained by foreign powers. All U.S.-Allied propaganda efforts cannot hide this fact. The Iraqi people, confronted with intensive U.S.-efforts to exterminate as many of them as possible, will not collaborate with the U.S. - if not forced. The logic is long known. WWII's "war against the cities" failed to undermine the morale of the affected people and even had opposite effects. The same could be seen in the Vietnam and Afghanistan wars, which made clear, that intensive terror and destruction, or even occupation with high numbers of ground forces, didn't succeed in maintaining or regaining control over domestic affairs. An occupying power will have only few local supporters and has to fight almost the entire population.

And let me add a few words about the military strategy used against Iraq. The Allied forces avoided any fighting against enemy forces. Air supremacy was achieved within few days. Further bombings concentrated on the destruction of basic infrastructure, storage facilities and industrial capacities. The clear intention of these bombings was to deteriorate the conditions for survival. Without sufficient drinkable water, food, energy, medical supplies and health facilities, communication systems and other important infrastructure the survival of millions of people was put into question. The selection of targets only make sense if we accept, that it was a preparation to systematical killing Iraqi people.

Overpopulation defined by Profit

Today there is a huge oversupply of work force. Countries and people are competing against each other for international investment capital. There is more than enough heavily oppressed and cheap labor available worldwide. From the capitalist point of view overpopulation describes those, who are not able to compete successfully for a sufficient amount of money or resources to have the essential means of survival at their disposal.

All Middle Eastern oil producing countries still don't have much to sell but crude oil. International capital showed no interest to invest in other sectors than energy, which is a highly capital intensive sector with only very few people employed. Moreover, many of the specialists employed are foreigners and nearly all the technology must be imported. In the phase of high oil prices during most of the 1970s until 1985 they had some revenues and the population rich countries among them were able to provide services for its people and increase the level of consumption while trying to reduce their dependence on imports through an economic policy of import substitution. Those with small populations instead invested most of their revenues onto the global capital markets.

From the viewpoint of international profit those large consuming populations are not appreciated. Iraq and its people offer only marginal profit expectations for foreign investors. Wouldn't it be more profitable they were dead after all? At least that its population doesn't increase?