US economic sanctions…a real killer

The US government tosses around the threat, then often implements economic sanctions with carefree abandon. The word ‘sanction’ itself is quite innocuous to most Americans, barely raising an eyebrow of concern for the helpless victims of its cruel, inhumane consequences. The people of Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea and Iran know full well those consequences. But every American should consider how they might react if a seriously ill loved one was denied life enhancing medicine because a foreign nation could cut off the supply of that drug. The resulting degraded health or even death might bring home what the folks of the aforementioned countries live with every day from US sanctions choking off crucial supplies of food and medicine.

Of course that would never happen to an American due to the power imbalance between the US and every nation it sanctions. Only the US has the power and the heartlessness to inflict such damage on innocent civilians. A year ago we re-imposed sanctions on Iran after recklessly pulling out of the 5+1 Nuclear Agreement, choking off Iran’s access to medicines including cancer treatment. Idriss Jazairy, UN special inspector on the negative impact of unilateral coercive measures,s reports “The current system creates doubt and ambiguity which makes it all but impossible for Iran to import these urgently needed humanitarian goods. This causes a ‘chilling effect’ which likely leads to silent deaths in hospitals as medicines run out, while the international media fail to notice.” Iran’s universal health care policy, in effect since 1986, has been seriously degraded in what is essentially America’s regime change policy for Iran.

Everyone can understand the killing power of US bombs fired from planes and drones. Everyone should also understand the less dramatic but equally deadly power of those innocuous economic sanctions.