|
The militarization
of foreign policy: Impact on people's health
(first of two-parts)
by
Roland Simbulan
The
war drums of the United States are again preparing for an attack
against a sovereign nation in the Middle East, Iraq. According to
a study released last Nov. 12, 2002, titled, “Collateral Damage:
The Health and Environmental Costs of War on Iraq,” by the International
Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), an association
of medical and public health experts that was the recipient of the
1985 Nobel Peace Prize, “a US-led attack on Iraq would result in
between 48,000 and 260,000 deaths during the first three months
of combat.”
According to
the IPPNW, “Neither Iraq’s suspected weapons programs nor Saddam
Hussein’s tyranny provides moral or military justification for risking
the lives of massive numbers of innocent civilians.” IPPNW thus
made the appeal: “We urge all nations to spare the innocent in favor
of full and effective inspections.”
This recent
study by that international association of medical and public health
practitioners and researchers, the IPPNW, based its projections
on the 1990-1991 Gulf War, which caused nearly 200,000 casualties
in Iraq, mostly civilians. It analyzed current US combat scenarios
and concluded that a new conflict would be much more intense and
destructive than the first Gulf War.
Dr. Amy Sisley,
a professor of surgery at the University of Maryland Medical System,
explained in the IPPNW study, “ In an era where images of combat
are beamed from aircraft, it is too easy to forget about the direct,
physical consequences of war. Bombs deafen, blind and blow apart
people, riddling them with sharpnel, glass and debris. They collapse
buildings on victims, including hospitals and clinics vital to treating
the wounded. Unexploded ordinance left behind kills and maims, and
battlefield toxins can contaminate the environment for decades.
“
Dr. Robert
K. Musil, executive director of the American Physicians for Social
Responsibility, summarized the public health impacts in the report:
“Even so-called
high-tech war wrecks a society’s human service systems and physical
infrastructure by disrupting delivery of food, water, medicine and
energy supplies. The loss of these necessities of life leads to
infection, disease, malnutrition and starvation on a massive scale.
“
As emphasized
by Dr. Victor W. Sidel of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine
and past president of the American Public Health Association, “a
pre-emptive attack would exacerbate the disastrous levels of health,
disease, disability and despair already present in Iraq.” Furthermore,
according to the IPPNW study, the aftermath of a US-led attack could
include civil war, famine, epidemics, millions of refugees and economic
collapse. It would be a “human catastrophe.”
If this would be the scenario, why is the administration of President
Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo
supporting US President George W. Bush’s aggressive drive to plunge
the world into a horrible war that will heighten the cycle of violence
ignited by Sept. 11? Why is our government supporting a war that
no less than Pope John Paul II, in his Dec. 25, 2002, Christmas
message has condemned when he said that, Bush’s call for a “preventative
war is an act of aggression”?
Furthermore,
it is a US-provoked and initiated war that we are being asked to
support against a sovereign country which has full diplomatic and
consular ties with the Philippines! And no less than former US President
Jimmy Carter, also a Nobel Peace Prize winner, has criticized his
own government for its double standards against Iraq and North Korea
when it “(failed) to cooperate with international efforts targeted
to prohibit the arsenals of biological weapons that we ourselves
have and to enforce the agreement to eliminate chemical weapons,
and the same way with nuclear weapons.”
We must remember
that the United States has the largest arsenal of nuclear, chemical
and biological weapons in the world today. What moral right then
does this superpower — well-armed with all the weapons of mass destruction
that it asks others to disarm — have in calling for a “regime change”
against another sovereign country that is a member of the United
Nations AND WHICH HAS FULL DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS WITH THE PHILIPPINES?
Is the US telling us that might makes right?
The lives,
health and safety of an estimated 1.4 million Filipino overseas
workers in the Middle East may be imperiled as they will be caught
in the crossfire of a full-scale attack by the United States against
Iraq. Philippine Foreign Affairs Secretary Blas Ople must either
be joking or hallucinating when he said that if war breaks out,
“things will be okay simply because we are ready to evacuate 147
Filipinos in Iraq.”
A US-led war
of aggression against Iraq will fan the flames of violence and counter-violence
already evident in the region. As such, casualties may not be limited
to those in Iraq. Any attack on Iraq will most likely affect and
put to risk neighboring countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and
the United Arab Emirates where the bulk of Filipino overseas workers
are located since the United States has military facilities or forces
there. There are 400,000 Filipino workers in Saudi Arabia alone.
Here at home,
where the Arroyo administration has committed to fully support the
US’ so-called war against terror, not only will the Philippines
have to absorb and expose itself and its people to retaliatory attacks
by enemies of the United States. Paranoia has spread like wildfire
and is now an epidemic among our national security and defense officials
who are pushing for the fast-track approval of the Anti-Terrorism
Bill, the local version of the US Patriot Act and Homeland Security
Act. Those two measures have virtually transformed the United States
today into a police state that legalizes warrantless arrests, illegal
detention and interrogation, racial profiling and indefinite detention.
Wiretapping or eavesdropping into private communication is now standard
operational procedure not only among US law enforcement agencies
but also state and federal agencies.
What then is
the best antidote against terrorism?
As a result
of these international and local developments, the urgent and pressing
basic needs of the Filipino people are being further neglected.
There is a saying among development planners that, “The real policy
is where the money is.” Now, in our national budget, where is our
money going? Does it give priority to our people’s basic needs like
health care, education and housing? Does it give the highest importance
to the poor and needy, especially the farmers and workers who make
up the largest sectors of Philippine society?
I now realize
the low priority that the government is giving to health and education,
as well as other basic services to the poor, while giving the higher
priority to the military and police budgets. For the coming year,
for instance, UP’s health sciences colleges will experience a slash
of 14.75% while the PGH budget will be cut by 5%.
In the context
of the anti-terrorism bill being discussed in Congress, this low
priority given to basic services such as health and education will
all the more make our country a haven for so-called terrorists who
are disillusioned and angry at the government. This explains why
there is the absence of health and medical people to care for the
overall health and sanitation needs of the people especially the
rural poor. For the most important legislation against terrorism
is an increase in the budget of the basic social services, namely
health, education, and housing, rather than relying on the military
and police solutions. If the government were really serious in snuffing
out terrorism and insurgency as well as reducing criminality, then
it should give greater priority to basic social services. In effect,
a pro-poor national budget would be the best anti-terrorism legislation.
If the Arroyo
administration were really serious about renewing itself, then it
should integrate into its national agenda the pro-poor and pro-sovereignty
programs and implement these with priority budgets to assure their
realization. People’s movements as well as revolutionary movements
are not struggling and sacrificing just so that certain leaders
will get positions of power without altering priorities or reforming
the system.
That is why,
the highly publicized suggestion (of Speaker Jose de Venecia) to
“form a government of national unity” that would invite leaders
of rebel groups like Jose Ma. Sison and Hashim Salamat into the
cabinet is a laughable suggestion, at least for genuine leaders
of the people. It is a measure to coopt or even bribe with positions
of power and privilege the leaders of people’s movements—a tactic
utilized since the Spanish, American and Japanese colonization of
the Philippines. In those days, our colonizers bribed weakling resistance
leaders with local positions of political power so they could be
used against their own people who were resisting colonization.
A good start
instead would be for the Philippine government to implement the
pro-peace provisions of the Philippine Constitution by, for example,
not supporting Bush’s war preparations against Iraq and instead
working for peaceful negotiations towards disarmament. Arroyo can
also begin a true renewal by asking her supporters in Congress to
give budgetary priorities to vital basic services like health, education
and housing for the poor, instead of the military, police and intelligence
budgets. As I said earlier, this is the best antidote to the “terrorism
threat”. This is just to remind us that so long as the root causes
of grave social inequalities are unresolved, rebellion and uprising
will remain an attractive option to the unfree and the poor.
Editor’s
note: The author is the Vice
Chancellor for Planning and Development, University of the Philippines,
Manila; Co-Convenor, Gathering for Peace.
|
.jpg)
