Sanctions (n.) can be pure fraud: the Haiti embargo exempted hundreds of U.S. firms, let oil flow to the junta, and saw U.S. trade rise by half — while the press called it "fine-tuning."
Sanctions (n.) on Iraq killed hundreds of thousands of children and strengthened the dictator they targeted, who could now rally nationalism against them.
Sanctions (n.) can strengthen the tyrant they target: they wreck civil society and force the people to depend on him to survive.
Sanctions (n.) are justified when the people who suffer them want them, as black South Africans did; Iranian reformers say theirs only militarize the country and kill democracy.
Sanctions (n.) work quietly through the hold: switches, sockets, paint and heart-lung machines blocked one by one — the administrative form of strangulation.
Sanctions (n.) punish the subjects and spare the tyrant, who may even come out stronger.
Sanctions (n.) on Iraq may have killed more people than all weapons of mass destruction in history, by two hawkish analysts' reckoning.
Sanctions (n.) on Iraq were called genocidal by the very UN officials who ran the humanitarian program, both of whom resigned in protest.
Sanctions (n.) on Iraq punished the tyrant's crimes by crushing his victims — as if, when a hijacker seizes a school bus, we blew it up and rewarded the hijacker.
Sanctions (n.) bind a people more tightly to their tyrant, since they come to depend on him for survival.
Sanctions (n.) on Iraq killed hundreds of thousands, strengthened the tyrant, and made his people depend on him to survive.
Sanctions (n.) are threatened for breaching protectionist demands, but would be counterproductive against torture.