Madeline Albright, who served as the US Secretary of state from 1997 to 2001, died at the age of 84 surrounded by family and friends.
The tweet, posted by her family, also said “We have lost a loving mother, grandmother, sister, aunt, and friend.”
Missing in the tweet was the fact that the loving mother and grandmother was, among other, responsible for the death of more than half a million Iraqi children and the destruction of the Iraqi community.
She was once asked in an interview, if this high child death count was worth it. She answered: “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it.”
Later she apologised for what she said with the words: “As soon as I had spoken, I wished for the power to freeze time and take back those words. My reply had been a terrible mistake, hasty, clumsy and wrong. Nothing matters more than the lives of innocent people. I had fallen into the trap and said something I simply did not mean. That was no one’s fault but my own.”
Well, she apologised for what she said but not for what she did.
She never publicly regretted the killing of the Iraqi people by the sanctions, that had no reason after the withdrawal of the Iraqi troops from Kuwait at the end of the 1991 war.
Iraq’s military power and infrastructure were destroyed by the war. The long embargo after that, was soon proven a useless method against the ruling authority. It’s only effect was to totally destroy the Iraqi community, the cause that made Iraq a cradle for all evil after finalising the catastrophe with the 2003 war and the removal of the authority that was, more or less, holding everything together by force and fear.
The US troops came on the pretext of mass destruction weapons and promised to give the Iraqi people the “freedom” they didn’t ask for, because they had no time to think of freedom when they desperately needed food, medicine, and stability. No wonder “freedom” turned into “anarchy” and “instability”.
The late Ms. Albright had enough time to observe the effects of her decision and to at least beg for forgiveness for what she had done. Well, she decided not to regret and to give excuses and free herself from the responsibility. She left the world, that she made a worse place for so many others, to rest in peace.
And I ask myself “What if she will really rest in peace?”