U.S. sanctions on Iraq killed up to 1.5 million people, mostly children

Evidence

If such simplistic rhetoric had not achieved such a dominant position, then more Americans would discuss the ramifications of U.S. support for Israel against the Palestinians, or the polarizing role of U.S. military bases in Saudi Arabia, or the devastations caused by U.S. sanctions on Iraq between 1990 and 2003 (during which time between 170,000 and 1.5 million Iraqis, mostly children, died). Similarly absent from public debate is the U.S. role in the creation of Afghanistan’s mujahedeen during the Cold War who were funded to fight a proxy war against the Soviet Union and whether mujahedeen (with American training and funding) fueled the rise of Al Qaeda. Such complexity, instead, seems distasteful to mainstream journalism. Such complexity requires too much explanation, especially for an audience raised on sound bites. Rather the debate is over whether these stated grievances should be considered at all; the foundational premise, however, is more often than not just taken for granted: terrorism results from Muslim fundamentalism. — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media, 897

Categorization

• QUESTION: The 170,000 to 1.5 million death range is huge — worth checking the primary sources and methodology behind each estimate.
• SEED: The core move here — how news framing renders complexity ‘distasteful’ — could seed an essay on how complexity itself became a journalistic liability.
• XREF: connects to: US sanctions on 1990s Iraq killed over a million Iraqis — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 197