To the Editor:
In 1991, the United States expressed outrage against Iraq's treatment of its Kurdish minority, using Iraqi human rights abuses as a justification for the Gulf War. But last year when the Turkish government used American-made helicopters and F-16 fighters to attack Kurdish villages in southern Turkey and northern Iraq, the U.S. government remained silent. Now, the Clinton administration wants to sell Turkey ballistic missiles designed to carry cluster bombs, which are primarily antipersonnel weapons. The Turkish government will most likely use these missiles against Kurdish civilians.
This is not an isolated incident. For the past five years the United States government has been the primary supplier of arms to the "Third World." Eighty percent of those weapons have gone to countries with undemocratic governments that have consistently committed human rights violations against their citizens -- countries like Indonesia, which has killed 1/3 of the population of East Timor since it invaded that small nation in 1975, and Colombia, which has used American-made weapons to kill indigenous people and dissidents.
U.S. arms exports perpetuate these kinds of abuses. Military regimes in countries around the world buy small arms, helicopters and artillery to deter or crush uprisings by their desperate populations. These countries spend such a high percentage of their budgets on weapons and military training that they are unable to fund social programs, and their citizens become poorer and more desperate -- and more likely to revolt. Meanwhile, the juntas consolidate power and the military increases its control over the rest of the government. Thus these regimes become caught in a vicious cycle of dependency on imported weapons and violent, repressive responses to dissent.
When President Clinton took office, he promised to take steps to curb the arms trade. But the Clinton administration has actively pursued an increase in U.S. arms exports. Secretary of Commerce, Ron Brown, has traveled around the world, helping American companies like Lockheed-Martin and Boeing sell advanced weapons to virtually anyone who will by them. Meanwhile, the House has rejected legislation that would place restrictions on arms exports to human rights abusers, and the Senate has refused to vote on the legislation. And Congress and the Clinton administration both plan to give the arms export industry $7.3 billion in direct subsidies this year.
According to recent polls, most Americans oppose selling weapons to undemocratic regimes. But none of the major presidential candidates has addressed this issue. Over the next month, as the nation's eyes are on New Hampshire, we here at Dartmouth will have a unique opportunity to try to inject this issue into the national debate about our nation's foreign policy. It's time for us to stand up and demand that our leaders stop arming human rights abusers.
