Although Iraq is half a world away from Charlottesville, many University students are as impassioned about the events transpiring in the Middle East as if battles were being waged in their own backyards.
University students prove to be divided in their views about U.S. sanctions against Iraq. The sanctions, which the U.N. Security Council enacted in 1990, include a full embargo on trade with Iraq.
Several Arab students condemned the economic sanctions against Iraq, calling them inhumane and ineffective in quelling Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's aggression.
"Not only should the sanctions on Iraq be lifted, but they never should have been imposed in the first place," said Arab Student Organization President Laila Kassis.
Over one million children have died since the U.N. implemented the sanctions, making them "among the largest genocidal acts of the century," Kassis said.
The United States helped create Hussein's power by providing Iraq with weapons and technology during the Iran-Iraq war, Kassis added.
Now that Iraq no longer serves the United States as an economic or strategic ally, the U.S. has decided to destroy Iraq and Hussein by destroying their people, she said.
But Hillel treasurer Jeffrey Scherr said the sanctions should stay in place.
Iraq "is still following the same pre-Gulf War policies and resisting U.N. action. Repealing the sanctions would serve only to condone Iraq's actions," Scherr said.
"Since the sanctions themselves have not proven successful, it seems instead that they need to be strengthened, or else a new policy should be added to them," he added. Hillel is a nationwide organization for Jewish students.
But Kassis and others said the sanctions deprive Iraqi civilians of basic needs.
"These sanctions are inhumane, they have killed far over one million, they have crippled a nation, and they have not achieved their goal," she said. "I find it outrageous ... that the U.S., the self-proclaimed harbinger of international peace, stability and human rights, has done everything it can to protect its economic and strategic interests by destroying an entire nation."
Third-year Medical School student Hani Mowafi called the sanctions immoral.
"The collective punishment of a people is wrong," Mowafi said.
Other methods of putting pressure on the Iraqi government, such as military sanctions, would be more humane, he added.
"The sanctions have proved ineffective in bringing down Saddam Hussein," former ASO president Shereen Abdel-Nabi said. "The people, not the government, are suffering"
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