Madeleine Albright died a champion of infanticide

Madeleine Albright is dead and no right thinking person will mourn her passing. The first female US secretary of state and former US ambassador to the UN, Albright’s legacy will forever be dominated by her barbaric defence of infanticide. This came during a 1996 interview in which, when on the subject of over half a million Iraqi children dying as a result to US-led UN sanctions, she was asked if the price is worth it: “I think this is a very hard choice,” she replied, ‘but the price, we think the price is worth it.”

Yet, even though Albright’s rebarbative defense of infanticide may have guaranteed her a first class ticket on a rocket ship to hell, going by the lamentably predictable gushing tributes to her legacy that have emanated from Washington, London, Brussels etc., in response to her passing , you would think she died a martyr for women’s rights and decency. If anything, it comes as further evidence of the chasm which separates servants and apologists for empire from its countless victims and casualties. It also leaves us in no doubt that we in the West are led by men and women for whom brutality is a virtue and compassion a vice.

The sanctions imposed on Iraq for 13 years between 1990 and 2003 were positively medieval in scope and in their impact on Iraqi society. A 1998 analysis of this impact, produced by the UK charity…