"Crippling sanctions": crippling for whom?

If you watched the State of the Union address the other night, you may have heard Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama talk about imposing "crippling sanctions" on Iran. It's a common phrase that the interchangeable Republican candidates (except one, of course) regularly utter as well.

When we impose economic sanctions restricting the flow of goods to and from a country, the government of that country simply does what government always does: it hoards everything for itself at the expense of the people. It then has an easy scapegoat upon which to blame the suffering of the people, which in turn makes those people hate that scapegoat, naturally. So, not only do we not punish the government we are seeking to punish (as if we had the authority to do so in the first place), we also create enemies of its people, instead of winning their hearts and minds through our values, culture, and commerce.

Let's just be honest about this: imposing "crippling sanctions" on any sovereign nation is antithetical to the declared American values of natural rights, liberty and peaceful exchange; leads to untold death and destruction; and makes us less safe. Quite contrary to the Republican/Democrat/Media establishment’s endless war agenda, Thomas Jefferson encouraged the following:

“Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations—entangling alliances with none.”

We are kidding ourselves if we believe that the U.S. government imposing sanctions on any country is legally, logically or morally justifiable, and does something other than kill large numbers of innocent civilians and lead directly to war.  In fact, if this were done to our country, we would correctly consider it an act of war. 

Crippling, indeed.