[lbo-talk] 'shillin' with Al Franken

Seth Ackerman sethia at speakeasy.net
Fri Mar 26 16:32:48 PST 2004


From: "Luke Weiger" <lweiger at umich.edu>


> 1) The planners of the raid thought it was a plant for manufacturing
> weapons; not medicine. The intelligence, as we now know, was completely
> wrong. I don't think anyone has argued that the Clinton team
intentionally
> bombed what they knew to be a pharmaceutical plant; if that was the case,
of
> course they should be doing time.
>
> 2) The bombing raid was planned in such a way that the total of civilians
> killed by the bombing itself was minimized (I believe only one person was
> killed in the raid).
>
> 3) I think the US should've rebuilt the factory, though we have very
little
> idea just how "severe" the consequences were for the Sudanese people. The
> data is ambivalent at best, and Chomsky's assertion that the death toll
was
> substantially greater than 911 was not properly supported.

Luke, stop a minute and think about the ludicrous assumptions embedded in your defense of the bombing. The Clinton admin just decided on its own to bomb a country when there was no imminent danger of an attack, without any international sanction or even an attempt at a diplomatic "solution." If they really did think it was a chemical weapons factory, that almost makes it *more* scandalous. It's as if one day I drove by your house and sprayed machine-gun fire through the window because I "honestly believed" you were somehow involved in a threat against my family. No attempt to call the police or anything similar. Then when it turns out you had nothing to do with the threat against me, I respond indignantly: Sure I made a mistake; I'll offer to pay for the damage. But it's not like I did anything criminal. I deliberately timed the shooting in the midde of the day when I knew you'd be out. I only killed one housekeeper. And I really, truly believed you were threatening me. What else was I supposed to do?

If the US thought it was a bin Laden chemical-weapons factory, it could have called an emergency session of the Security Council, presented the intelligence and demanded a resolution requiring Sudan to let inspectors into the factory. (Apparently the dictator of Sudan had privately offered years before to let American anti-terror people come in to the country and look anywhere they wanted.) If Sudan refused -- unlikely for obvious reasons -- we could have gotten a resolution authorizing us to bomb the factory. That's the way EVERY OTHER COUNTRY IN THE WORLD would have done it. Otherwise there would be hell to pay. I could just imagine your reaction if Syria bombed an Israeli chemical-weapons factory: Well, as long as they pay the damages it's okay.

As for the issue of how many people died, it's not relevant to the main argument. But for what it's worth, here's what the then-German ambassador in Sudan (now a fellow at Harvard of some kind) has written:

[It is difficult to assess how many people in this poor African country died as a consequence of the destruction of this factory, but several tens of thousands seems to be a reasonable guss. The factory produced some of the basic medications of the WHO list, holding 20 to 60 percent of Sudan's market and 100% for intravenous liquids. It took over three months until imports could be substituted for these products. It was of course the poor and the vulnerable who died, not the rich.]

Dude, if this is your idea of a 'democratic socialist' foreign policy, count me out.

Seth



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