Parenting & Family Quote by George Galloway

Galloway’s line is engineered to short-circuit a familiar moral trap: if you oppose Saddam, you’re supposed to endorse whatever Washington claims is the alternative. By opening with “I am an opponent of Saddam Hussein,” he buys himself credibility across hostile audiences, then immediately flips the frame so the real defendant becomes policy, not personality. It’s a rhetorical judo move, using concession as a weapon.

The emotional core is the phrase “a million Iraqi children.” Whether or not one accepts the precise figure (it’s been fiercely disputed), the intent is clear: sanctions aren’t a clean, technocratic tool; they’re mass harm with paperwork. Galloway collapses the distance between bureaucratic language and bodily consequence, forcing listeners to picture children rather than “pressure” or “containment.” It’s not policy critique as spreadsheet; it’s policy critique as indictment.

Context matters: late-1990s/early-2000s Iraq, when UN-backed sanctions (driven heavily by the US and UK) were defended as the humane alternative to war, even as reports showed catastrophic humanitarian fallout and “oil-for-food” became a symbol of compromised mitigation. The subtext is anti-imperial and prosecutorial: the West doesn’t just react to Middle Eastern dictators; it helps script the conditions that keep the region combustible, then sells the ensuing intervention as reluctant necessity.

“Apparent desire to plunge the Middle East” is careful phrasing, too: it alleges motive without needing proof, letting suspicion do the persuasive work. The quote isn’t trying to absolve Saddam; it’s trying to widen the dock.