Where Were You on January 16, 1991?
by Marie Braun, WAMM
Lately, I have been remembering events leading up to January 16, 1991. The Iraqis invaded Kuwait. The UN imposed sanctions against Iraq. Meanwhile, the U.S. media demonized Saddam Hussein, even reporting a fabricated story about the murder of infants in incubators. I have been remembering the demonstrations, sit-ins, rallies, and the crowd of more than 10,000 people who gathered at Northrop Auditorium to speak out against war.
Up until the last minute, I hoped against hope that the conflict could be a resolved without resorting to war. I was not alone. Half of the American people were opposed to going to war. Surely, I thought, that is a large enough number to convince President Bush and the Congress of the United States not to bomb Iraq.
But then came the evening of January 16, 1991. I stared at the television in horror as President Bush announced the beginning of a bombing campaign to force Saddam Hussein to remove his troops from Kuwait. I remember the feelings of disbelief, hopelessness, depression, frustration, and anger.
I remember the news blackout. All information came from the Pentagon. The government wanted to make sure it controlled what the American people saw and heard. This would not be a repeat of Vietnam, when television images of the battlefield so profoundly impacted American perspectives on the war.
For 43 days the allied forces rained down bombs on Iraq. More bombs were dropped on Iraq in those 43 days than were dropped in all of World War II, leaving Iraq the dubious distinction of being the most bombed country in the world. While there were some hints of the damage during the bombing campaign, it was only later that we learned of the true extent of the destruction and our government's deliberate decision to target civilians--flagrantly breaking the Geneva Convention and causing thousands of civilian deaths.
The U.S.-led allied forces deliberately destroyed Iraq's water supply during the war. Eight of Iraq's multi-purpose dams were hit, simultaneously wrecking flood control, municipal and industrial water storage, irrigation, and hydroelectric power. Major pumping stations and municipal water and sewage facilities were hit, resulting in the incapacitation of plants throughout Iraq. Every grain silo and other food storage facility in the country was bombed. Food processing plants throughout the country were destroyed.
Before January 16, 1991, Iraq was a highly developed, technically sophisticated, and self-reliant nation. Forty-three days later, it was a country of people suddenly coping with totally new life circumstances: no electricity, no running water, reliance on contaminated water, food and fuel shortages, transportation problems, high unemployment, little to no income, and thus no food. Refrigerators, fans, air conditioners, and other electrical appliances stopped working; cooking became a problem; toilets backed up.
For many weeks, people in Baghdad--without television, radio or newspapers to warn them--took their drinking water from the Tigris River in buckets. Dehydrated from nausea and diarrhea, craving liquids, they drank more of the water that initially made them sick.
Estimates of the number of deaths resulting from the war run from 10,000 to more than 100,000. We may never know the exact number of people who died as a result of the Persian Gulf War.
But we do know that they were ordinary people: peasants, truck drivers, and students--many slaughtered on the "Highway of Death" as they were retreating. Newsday reporters wrote: "Iraqi vehicles, some flying white flags, were backed up for miles on roads heading home when they were attacked over and over again by airplanes dropping antipersonnel bombs . . ." Later, they were, finished off with B-52 bombing runs. Many of those killed were young Shi'a and Kurdish soldiers drafted into the army against their will--the same people the U.S. government later said it wanted to protect with the imposition of the no-fly zones.
For Americans, the war ended on February 27, 1991, but the war had only begun for the Iraqi people. With the continuation of sanctions, the U.S.-led allied nations made sure that any attempt to rebuild the infrastructure and allow Iraq to return to some semblance of normalcy would be thwarted.
Since the end of the Gulf War, more than one million Iraqi civilians, over half of them children, have died as a direct result of the UN sanctions, which in recent years have been maintained primarily at the insistence of the U.S. and Great Britain. John and Karl Mueller reported in the May 1999 issue of Foreign Affairs that "the sanctions against Iraq have caused more deaths than all the weapons of mass destruction in the history of the world."
How can people of conscience respond to our country's violence against the Iraqi people? How can we assure that historians tell the true story of what actually happened?
January 16, 2001 marks the tenth anniversary of the beginning of the Gulf War. On that day, groups all over the United States will gather to commemorate the lives of those lost to the war and sanctions. Together we will keep alive the memory of the devastation of the Persian Gulf War and the ten-year-old economic sanctions imposed on the people of Iraq.
We will join our voices with others around the world who cry, "No more war, war no more!" and "Lift the sanctions now!" Hopefully, the sharing of our memories of this tragic history and the refusal of so many to forget will be recorded in the history books and will bring us one step closer to the condemnation of war and of the use of sanctions to destroy a people.
WAMM Action!
A Time to Remember
Tenth Anniversary of the Beginning of the Persian Gulf War
Tuesday, January 16, 2001
4:30 p.m.
Demonstration at the Federal Building (4th Street and 3rd Avenue, downtown Minneapolis) commemorating those who died in the war and calling for the end to the sanctions on Iraq
5:45 p.m. or immediately following the demonstration
Potluck dinner and a sharing of our memories and stories.
Hennepin County United Methodist Church Social Hall
511 Groveland Avenue (Groveland and Lyndale)
There is a large parking lot accessible off Groveland Avenue behind the church
6:30 p.m.
Speaker (to be announced) and open mic discussion
FFI: 612-827-5364