DICK’S REV.
FOR OMNI’S CLIMATE BOOK FORUM, APRIL 8, 2018.
I: Preparing to read, editor’s guiding
apparatus, the structure
II: Part II
“Terracide: the War on Nature”
Part I of SMITH, GAR, ED.
The War and Environment
Reader. 2017. Rev. Dick Bennett. Part I was distributed in
advance to the Book Forum committee.
Preparing to Read the Book
This
collection of 55 essays is an encyclopedia on war and warming, not to be read at
a sitting or two, but to have nearby for gradual reading and reflection. Recognizing the potential challenge
confronting readers, Smith has provided many reader-assistance features or
guide-posts to his meaning.
Readers first
encounter the name of the publisher, Just World Books, and his Dedication “To our
despoiled and damaged world,/ to the innocent victims of war….” And then a photo of a combat tank in the
foreground with burning oil fields in background, and the caption: “Oilfields
burning in Kuwait, 1991.”
With this preparation, Smith provides a
helpful Table of Contents of the essays divided into three Parts:
I. Permawar—Human
Nature and War
II. Terracide—The War on Nature
III.
Ecolibrium—Pathways to a Planet at Peace
Smith has performed
major work for us by discovering 55 essays and then distinguishing among them three
topics.
Immediately
following the Table of Contents is a second photo from the Gulf War of two
persons dressed in fire-protection clothing in foreground and again black smoke
covering the background, and caption: “EarthTrust volunteers face the fiery
aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War.” The
Table of Contents is firmly placed between two bookends denoting the
anthropogenic destruction of nature by war, with emphasis on war over oil.
The next page contains
a potent poem of ancient lineage, one of the world’s oldest surviving antiwar
poems, “Enheduanna’s Lament to the Spirit of War” (ca. 2300 BC): “You hack
everything down in battle…./God of War, with your fierce wings/you slice away
the land….”
A third photo now
appears, of “A B-52 Stratofortress [as it] refuels before dropping bombs on
Syria during Operation Inherent Resolve, 2017.”
On the next page begins the “Introduction: Beyond Permawar and Terracide,”
Smith’s effort to epitomize his three groups of essays and to appraise
President Trump’s role. I’ll come back
to the Introduction shortly.
Preceding his texts, Smith chose seven signs
to guide our travel through the first two Parts. Following his texts of Part III on Peace, he
continues his assistance.
First,
“Strategies for a More Peaceful World” (285-298) offers 32 “global initiatives
designed to lead the world toward the goal of ‘positive peace’” (defined p.
285). For example: A Green Geneva
Convention, National Green Constitutions, Environmental Armies, The Nonviolent
Peaceforce: 32 ways to think and act globally for peace; 32 ways to imagine
peace in action.
Second,
“International Peace and Environmental Organizations,” 3 pages from the Albert
Einstein Institution to the World Peace Council, each accompanied by its web
site. Together, the “Strategies” and the
“Organizations” anchor hope in reality.
Finally, “About
the Contributors.” These bios of the
authors extend the contents and authenticity of the book significantly. We are reminded of the relevance to the
subject of notable people like Medea Benjamin, Pierce Brosnan, David Brower,
Major-General Smedley Butler, Dr. Helen Caldicott. We learn about less well-known contributors
whose scholarship forms the foundation of the book; such as Prof. Lisa Brady,
Boise State U, author of War Upon the
Land, and Prof. Hugh Gusterson, author of People of the Bomb. The
diversity of the authors becomes immediately obvious, for example: William
Astore was director of International History at the U.S. Air Force Academy, and
James Corbett, based in Japan, hosts The
Corbett Report and produces newsletters and videos.
Looking broadly at these bookends of
Smith’s library of writings on the causes, consequences, and remedies of war
against climate and the environment, he has given us useful guides to
understanding at the beginning and end.
Books like these are not written or read for surprise or sensation, but
for knowledge, discernment, and judgment, leading to action. So we can thank him for taking the time to give
us so many directions and guidelines regarding his intentions. Of course, the entire book is intentional, it
has a thesis—to oppose war and to defend the planet. Those who promote war and decimate the planet
control our government and corporate media.
Smith offers a valiant resistance.
There are three big
absences in scholarly apparatus--the lack of an Index, of books cited, and of
references for each article. Regarding
an Index, particularly in an encyclopedic anthology like this one, a reader’s
ability to efficiently relate and connect the essays is seriously impeded by
the publisher not paying the money to hire an indexer, or the editor running
out of time—or because of cost both had to choose between the Index and some
other part of the book. The missing
bibliography and references/notes are probably explained by Smith’s desire to
include as many essays as he could, and to make the texts more “readable.” Their loss damages credibility. He might have told us where to find them, but
I could not find it.
Closer
to the Essays
Back
to the Introduction by Gar Smith. (Smith has also written brief introductions
to all three Parts and two of the texts of the anthology: “Stones to Drones: A
History of War on Earth” and “El Salvador: Scorched Earth in Central America.”)
Print a copy of
the epigraph paragraph by Ban Ki-moon and carry it around in your pocket;
here’s one sentence: “The environment has long been a silent casualty of war
and armed conflict.” On second thought,
make several copies. Or if you like
Smith’s first paragraph better copy it! “Even before war breaks out, the Earth suffers.”
Choosing among the countless striking
passages one might quote is a common dilemma in this excellent book.
I was wondering
how Smith might introduce 55 essays even though all of the authors were
confronting militarism and destruction of the environment, and he knew their
contents thoroughly. But 55! Here is his method. He discusses his three main Parts but very
selectively.
Instead of trying to discuss the seven essays of Part I, “Permawar”
(divided into two Parts, “The Roots of War” and “The Business of War”) he
writes a new little essay on the US War Culture; i.e. the Pentagon, the
military-industrial complex, the dominant profit motive, war profiteers, the
“defense” deceit, the Pentagon’s unaccountable budget.
Instead of
discussing the essays of Part II,
“Terracide” (divided into 5 sections), he writes (a paragraph for each)
about US military bases around the world and their 11,000 military dumps,
Pentagon pollution, and the Pentagon’s (corporate) goal of “fighting for oil.”
And most of his
“introduction” of Part III is about
David Brower, whose essay “Ecology and War” is included in the section, then
back to the Pentagon’s pollution defending the fossil fuels companies, and the
400,000 lives lost to climate change in a single year many more than to
terrorism.
A reader might
joke that Smith became overwhelmed by the size of his creation, but had he
tried to discuss the contents of 55 essays, space would not have remained for
the essays! So he kept his eyes on his
prize in his Intro.
Plus a section
“Our Troubled Path” on bully Trump’s anti-social, anti-planet acts, and a final
section “Unity Over Division” stressing the rapidly changing, violent planet
and urging cooperation and compassion, “a peaceful, just, and sustainable
future.”
Smith divided the 55 essays into three Parts, for
each of which he wrote a succinct introduction:
Part I: Permawar--Human Nature and Warfare [or War]
This section of 15 essays is divided into two groups: “The
Roots of War” and “The Business of War.”
Part II: Terracide—The War on Nature
This section of 34 essays is divided into 5 groups: “Nature in the Crosshairs,” “Collateral
Damage,” “A Field Guide to Militarism,” “The Machinery of Mayhem,” “The
Aftermath”
Part III: Ecolibrium—Pathways to a Planet at Peace
This section of 5 essays forms one group: “Toward Ecolibrium”
Smith’s
introduction (pp. 11-14) to Part I opens with a photo of
a child of about 3 peering through the scope of a rifle supported by an
adult. The child is wearing a
baseball(?) jacket and cap. The photo is
followed by a bullseye epigraph: “I knew
Man was doomed when I realized that his strongest inclination was toward
ever-increasing homogeneity—which goes completely against Nature.” Humans are not predisposed “to choose
killing over cooperation,” but learn war from their culture, and some nations
suffer from illnesses—the US, as epitomized by President Trump, from
Narcissistic Personality Disorder. This
disorder is everywhere demonstrated by the extreme militarization of the
country, which he summarizes in two paragraphs; e.g., the huge Pentagon budget
and “wars are no longer avoided [by the US], but are provoked” (12). In a second section of this intro. Smith
writes about “Mapping the Terrain,” where he lists ten “foundational forces” of
the “militaristic mindset” of the US:
patriarchy leads the list, followed by machismo, misogyny, linear thinkhing,
combative sports, Hollywood promotion of violence, violent video games, acquisition
of natural resources, war economy, war profiteering, national debt of $14
trillion “as economic stimulus
program.” Under the heading of “The
Aftermath of War,” Smith summarizes the long-lasting harm to earth, air, sky
and all creatures by war. But “nature is
resilient,” as the Demilitarized Zone between the two Koreas illustrates.
The epigraph to his Introduction (91-94) to
Part II is from Chief Seattle: The White Man’s “hunger will eat the Earth
bare and leave only a desert.”
The
Military-Corporate-Congressional-Exec WH-Corp. Media National Security State
directs two wars: one overtly military in successive wars to control the planet
and protect the other covert war to exploit and extract the planet’s
resources. The consequence of these
dual, non-stop wars is climate change, refugees, heat (2016 the hottest year on
record following the two other hottest years on record), crop failures, water
scarcity, devastating storms. And these
steamrolling wars are ruled over by an ignorant President Trump who denies CC
and would continue oil and coal. In
“Mapping the Terrain,” Smith discusses the first four groups of essays: Nature
in the Crosshairs”: a survey of “scorched earth” warfare; “Collateral Damage”:
war’s impacts on cities; “A Field Guide to Militarism”: war metastasized
throughout the world even into outer space; “The Machinery of Mayhem”: the
environmental impacts of global warfare.
And the epigraph to his Introduction (260-65)
to Part III quotes Ludwig von Mises (“the failure…to impose peace by war”)
and Dwight Eisenhower (governments get out of the way of the people’s wish for
peace).
Smith traces the
failures of religions, just cause principles, and international treaties to
ensure peace. Many excellent Geneva
Conventions condemn aspects of war, including the killing of civilians and the
destruction of the natural environment.
He quotes from Prof. Steven Freeland’s book, Addressing the Intentional Destruction of the Environment during
Warfare: Just as rape during armed conflict was declared a war crime, so
too should be the destruction of the environment. But all treaties so far contain the “escape
clause” of permissibility for “military necessity.”
In “Mapping the Terrain,” Smith discusses the
five essays he chose for their special contribution to putting the Earth back
in balance—“Ecolibrium”--by Major-General Smedley Butler, “Take the Profit Out
of War”; David Brower, “Ecology and War”; the organization Environmentalists
Against War (founded by Smith), “Why We Oppose War and Militarism”; Klaus
Toepfer, “In Defense of the Environment”; UN Environment Programme, “Protecting
Nature from War.”
THE ESSAYS
I hope prior to the Forum to present some analysis of
individual essays. Please try to
acquire the book or parts of it before the Forum, and come to tell us about
what you have read. Consider writing a
Follow-up during the following the Forum.
Especially someone write about a passage, an essay, a group of the
essays can lead to action. These essay
were written by the heavy hitters of the peace, justice, and ecology
movement. Let’s move them into the minds
of NWA. Thanks, Dick
Tell your
senators to oppose Trump's war cabinet
Rick Wayman, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
3-39-18 via mail.salsalabs.net
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1:39 PM (49 minutes ago)
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Tell Your Senators
to Oppose Trump's War Cabinet
 Two dangerous new
appointments by President Trump have added even more urgency to the effort to
take away the president’s ability to use nuclear weapons first.
John Bolton is an
extreme hawk, and is set to become National Security Advisor on April 9.
He has advocated military action against North Korea and Iran. Bolton was a
top advocate of the regime change war in Iraq in 2003, which has had
catastrophic consequences for Iraq and the wider Middle East, as well as for
the U.S. His unbridled enthusiasm to repeat the debacle of preventive
military action and regime change in both North Korea and Iran is a huge
concern. Bolton’s new position unfortunately does not require Senate
confirmation.
Trump also nominated
Mike Pompeo to become the new U.S. Secretary of State. Pompeo is a staunch
opponent of the nuclear deal that was negotiated among the U.S., Iran,
Russia, UK, France, China, and Germany. In July 2017, Pompeo spoke in favor
of regime change in North Korea. He said, “I am hopeful we will find a way to
separate the [North Korean] regime from this [nuclear weapons] system… The
North Korean people, I’m sure, are lovely people and would love to see him
go.” A regime change war in North Korea would put the lives of millions of
people across Northeast Asia, including U.S. soldiers and civilians, at risk.
While our members of
Congress cannot do anything to block Bolton’s appointment, the Senate does
have to confirm Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State.
Having Pompeo as our
nation’s top diplomat would be disastrous. The Iran deal showed the power of
diplomacy and true negotiations. Scrapping it would harm U.S. relations with
the rest of the world, especially in the current opportunity for making
progress with North Korea. U.S. withdrawal from the Iran deal would cast
doubt on all international agreements we have made in the past and will try
to make in the future.
Please take a moment
to contact your
senators and urge them
to vote “no” to Mike Pompeo as U.S. Secretary of State, and let them know
that you support Sen. Ed Markey’s bill to restrict the president’s first use
of nuclear weapons.
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SECOND
HALF OF DICK’S REV. FOR
OMNI’S CLIMATE BOOK FORUM, APRIL 8, 2018l:
GAR SMITH’S THE WAR AND
ENVIRONMENT READER. Presented on April 8 at FPL.
Let’s try this method.
Because the
book is encyclopedic in scope with 55 essays, I discussed the book as a whole
in an earlier email to the Forum committee, and will be glad to send it to
anyone who wants it. And I’ll not try to discuss all or even most
of the essays individually, but will limit myself to Part II, the essays on “The
War on Nature,” and only a few of those.
Related, I have presented a 5-minute talk
on this book for KPSQ to try to convey why this book is a blowtorch for change. I will forward it to anyone who writes me a
note.
Smith divided the 55 essays into three Parts:
Part I: Permawar--Human Nature and Warfare [or War]
This section of 15 essays is divided into two groups: “The
Roots of War” and “The Business of War.”
Part II: Terracide—The War on Nature
This section of 34 essays is divided into 5 groups: “Nature in the Crosshairs,” “Collateral
Damage,” “A Field Guide to Militarism,” “The Machinery of Mayhem,” and “The
Aftermath”
Part III: Ecolibrium—Pathways to a Planet at Peace
This section of 5 essays forms one group: “Toward Ecolibrium”
Smith wrote an Introduction
to each of his 3 Parts.
The
epigraph to his Introduction (91-94) to Part II is
from Chief Seattle. Here is one line: “The
Earth is not [the White Man’s] Brother but his enemy.” While Part I examines US wars to control the
planet, Part II treats the US wars to exploit and extract the planet’s
resources. These inseparable wars
together have produced catastrophic global warming and climate change expressed
by weather extremes. Under President Trump they are sure to worsen.
Smith epitomizes
the first four groups of essays in Part II as follows: 1. “Nature in the
Crosshairs”: a survey of “scorched earth” warfare; 2. “Collateral Damage”: war’s impacts on cities; 3.
“A Field Guide to Militarism”: war metastasized throughout the world even into
outer space; “The Machinery of Mayhem”: the environmental impacts of global
warfare.
One structure
for interpreting a text is to examine the text and what is absent (contexts). The importance of this seemingly
encyclopedic collection is clear from how much it omits. Each of the 55 essays condense very large
subjects. Each essay is a potential
introduction to the book or books we need to adequately cover the subject. This is an urgently important subject grossly
understudied. For example, if the
leaders and people of the US were familiar with the horrendous bombings of N.
Korea during the Korean War, the people of the US just might feel some empathy
for them and their leader. Or take
Okinawa, also not represented: most of the US bases in Japan are located on the
island of Okinawa, whose population—and I refer to all species--is in frequent
turmoil over the harms to their island caused by the many bases.
Or take
insects. Aubrey Shepherd gave me
Douglas Tallamy’s book Bringing Nature
Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants. This entomologist marvelously explains
how population growth and development (“and no national recognition of the
limits of our land’s ability to support additional millions”) ensures
extinction “for most of our species” (12).
And he doesn’t mention climate change, not there yet.
So what’s really
missing in Smith’s book? Attention to
insects. Most forms of higher life
depend upon insect protein for life, and insects eat native plants. But the scholarship has been so long
delayed, or rather so long left unpublicized, that the essays in Smith’s book
report on bird decimation but not on their life-support. War and warming are killing the insects,
and nobody is reporting it, including Tallamy.
Now to the
essays. I will discuss only Section 1 of
Part II, “Terracide,” “Nature in the Crosshairs.”
Consider the 8
essays in the first section on US scorched earth imperialism. Smith discusses only one continent, Africa;
5 essays from the over 100 or more countries he might have chosen; while 3
essays discuss island parts of countries.
Continent: Africa; Countries: Afghanistan, El Salvador, Kuwait, Serbia,
Vietnam; Island subdivisions: Guam, Sardinia. You see what I mean about what is
left out?
But
much is presented. The decimation of one
forest by Agent
Orange—5 percent of Viet Nam’s forests--is described frighteningly in two pages:
“spraying of 72 million liters [19 million gallons] of herbicides and the
displacement of billions of cubic yards of soil by 13 million tons of bombs. .
. .”
The horrifying
ruin of Kuwait 1991-93 and flocks of birds dropping from the sky, endangered
turtles dying by the hundreds, black rain, tar, dust resulting from the burning
of 400 oil wells, and the Highway of Death.
The essay
on tiny colonial, thoroughly militarized Guam seems to be an exception to the
drastic sampling typifying other essays, until you begin to think about the
largest stationary aircraft in the history of the world and probably ever. Yes the island is thought of as a weapon, the
“tip of the US spear.” Army bases,
airfields, artillery testing ranges, aircraft carriers, troop barracks, weapons
depots, combat training, ship repair, arms sales, toxic waste sites, and golf
courses, McDonald’s, and brothels. But much
more could be said, for example, about the species made extinct or becoming
extinct on a tiny island armed and supplied to the teeth.
I’ve gone past my time.
A final comment.
This book should have appeared 20 years ago, so much needed to be
studied and written about war and warming.
But there have been important gains.
There is Barry Sanders’s excellent book: The Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of Militarism (2009), about the US military’s greenhouse
gases putting all Earth inhabitants in immanent danger. And Nick Turse’s Tomorrow’s Battlefield: US Proxy Wars and Secret Ops in Africa (2015), on the Pentagon’s already gigantic
footprint in Africa just beginning.
[I omitted this par., maybe use elsewhere:
OMNI’s Book
Forum might return to this book sometime during this year for reasons I will
give. We have repeated a book once
before with Naomi Klein’s This Changes
Everything. If the committee
chooses to do that, someone else might be moderator, as we try to expand
participation.]
PART II: TERRACIDE—THE WAR ON NATURE
[See interesting bios of authors pages 302-311.]
NATURE IN THE CROSSHAIRS (8)
Frank, Afghanistan: Bombing the Land of the Snow Leopard” (2010).
Afghan War against earth and species, carpet bombing, DU,
resources exploitation.
Goodall, Africa: Wars on Wildlife” (2003).
Killing Africa’s animals, esp. elephants, population
growth, refugees.
Smith, El Salvador: Scorched Earth in Central America”
(1988).
1980s dictatorship decimated peasant farming: antipersonnel
bombs, napalm, white phosphorous, deforestation, killing cows, the birds—tanangers,
warblers, kingbrds, vireos,
Lutz, “Guam: The Tip of America’s Global Spear” (2010).
Colonial Guam a gigantic stationary aircraft carrier preparing
for war, like continental USA, and US power projected all over planet. Colonial racism, inequality.
Thomas, “Kuwait: The War That Wounded the World” (1991).
The “world’s biggest oil spill,” “the world’s biggest
environmental catastrophe in modern times,” rain of bombs, toxic clouds, black
rain, tarcrete, Highway to Hell, radioactivity, farming/farmland decimated, “history’s
most intensive suburban bombing campaign”; weather destabilized globally: Eco war and cover-up. Bush learned nothing.
Frazer, “Serbia: The Impact of NATO’s Bombs” (2000).
Jet aircraft emissions, DU, vast clouds of toxic soot, war
on farming. Yuogo gov. accused NATO of
violating “just about every existing environmental treaty.”
Jaccard, Sardinia: Bombs and Cancer in Paradise (2012)
One third of Italian and NATO military bases are in
Sardinia (cp. Okinawa), NATO’s largest air base at Decimomannu, large areas of dangerous wastes and
battlegrounds, uninhabitable, high rates of cancer and birth deformities near
them, etc.
Kemf, “Vietnam: Delivering Death to the A Luoi Valley”
(1990).
US ecocide of one agri area bombed, shelled, sprayed,
including 100,00 hectares of forest destroyed by Agent Orange, reminds him of
Rachel Carson’s “silent spring.” “This
is a crime against nature and humanity….The rich fauna...the large number of
species…are gone.”
COLLATERAL DAMAGE (6)
Fisk, The
Independent, “Baghdad: A Civilization Torn to Pieces” (2003).
Shortly after the US invasion 2003, mob destruction of
Iraq’s great art and literature, unprotected by US occupiers.
Weir, Toxic Remnants of War Project, “Ukraine: Civil War
and Combat Pollution” (2016).
Long-term damage to the environment following the
secessionist conflict in eastern Ukraine: flooded mines, polluted water
supplies by bombed chemicals, damaged military equipment, notably the region’s
numerous nature parks. “…a new system of
environmental protection and restoration” is needed.
Swijnenburg and Pas, Pax for Peace, “Syria: Cities Reduced
to Toxic Rubble” (2015).
Climate conflict: prior to 2011 uprising “5 successive
years of drought,” millions “forced to flee their homes.” By 2013 some 1.2 million homes destroyed;
Portland cement toxic, destruction of Aleppo, Homs, explosive remnants of
battles.
Hastings, “Wars and Refugees” (2017).
Destruction of enviro by flood of fleeing refugees, 65
million in 2017, most from Syria, Afghanistan, and Somalia, 7.3 million I
Yemen, 2.2 million children.. Also 22
million displaced 2008-2015 by consequences of cc—flood, fires, rising seas,
with “scores of millions more” to lose homes, cities from climate chaos. “When
we solve the problem of war, all the rest
will be far less difficult” (155)
Benjamin, Codepink, “Civilian Victims of Killer Drones”
(2013).
Medea tells horror story of Roya, Afghan child refugee in
Pakistan, family victims of “collateral damage.”
Brosnan, NRDC, “The Navy’s Sonic War on Whales” (2014).
Detailed explanation of sonar and its terrible effects on
whales. Also history of whale
strandings.
A FIELD GUIDE TO MILITARISM (7)
LaDuke, Honor the Earth, “The Militarization of Native
Lands” (2013).
Pentagon taking Indian land for weapons testing, practice
bombing, and field maneuvers, without cleaning up afterward (unexploded bombs,
hazardous waste). Most of the military’s
30 million acres were taken from Native peoples. Etc. essay covers a lot of
subjects and still only barely begins the story.
Swanson, World Beyond War, “Wars Are No Longer Fought on
Battlefields” (2010).
US wars abroad are not fought on “battlefields” as of yore,
but in hometowns and neighborhoods. From
Vietnam, Bush, and Obama: “War…now officially everywhere and eternal,” and
killed mostly civilians PLUS countless harms, and the aftermath (176)..
Lanier-Graham, “War on Land: Toxic Burdens and Military
Exercises” (2017).
“One of the first effects of military buildup is a
relaxation of environmental standards.” Essay a quick intro. to the toxic sites
caused by military: Maryland’s Aberdeen Proving Ground (arsenic, cyanide,
napalm, white phosphorus, etc.), Tinker AFB vs. OK’s only underground aquifer
(trichloroethylene, hexavalent chromium, etc.), etc. Military exercises, armored tanks….
Paik, International Forum on Globalization, “War on the
Sea: Islands Under Siege (2017).
US controls 9 million square nautical miles of militarized Pacific
Ocean much acquired by fraud “marine monuments”) vs. China. Ecocidal war games killing hundreds of
thousands marine animals. Much more.
Delestrac, “Wars for Sand: The Mortar of Empires” (2016).
“…sand (after water the most consumed resource on Earth) is
now on the front lie of a growing global war over access to raw materials.”
Letman, “War at a Distance: Long-Range Missiles” (2014).
Militarized Hawaii, e.g. the Pacific Missile Range Facility
PMRF plus 2.1 million square miles of “extended range,” Hawaii a major player
in a militarized Pacific Ocean.
Grossman, “War in Space: Astro-Imperialism” (2017)(195).
US Space Command (USSC) preparations to fight in space,
dominate, unilaterally control, and win. Deployment of weapons in space linked
to nuc power. All in violation of the
Outer Space Treaty of 1967. Trump for
weaponizing space, $52 billion to the $1.15 trillion “America First” budget for
“American superiority..on land, sea, air, and space.”
THE MACHINERY OF MAYHEM (7)
Sanders, “Fueling the Engines of Empire” (2009).
Wars by nations are wars v. the Earth. Footprint stats: war v. Earth in Iraq War: in 2015 30,000
vehicles; First Gulf War M-1 Abrams tanks in desert; 92 different kinds of
aircraft; 2 million gallons of oil a day; a single aircraft carrier; pollution
unreported; etc.
Savage, War Resisters League, “Superpower, Superpolluter”
(2000).
Pentagon enviro impact: toxic pollution, $1 million a
minute, 55 times more $ than for EPA, money could be used in 1000s of ways for
land and species, Philippines, Puerto Rico, Panama, etc. trashed and scorched;
radioactive leftovers; depleted uranium, etc.
Loesch, “Jet Fright: The Impacts of Military Aircraft”
(1989).
Kerosene rain, W. Germany ‘60s-‘80s 600,000 NATO flights
yearly, hydrazine, noise, animal health effects, average annual military
sorties 700,000, etc.
Williams, International Campaign to Ban Landmines, “Land
Mines: The Smallest WMDs” (1997).
Anti-personnel mines, massive use: 400 million since WWII;
developing world hit hardest, Africa worst; Campaign to Ban LM 1999 Ottawa
Treaty banned them: US, China, Russia, and many other nations didn’t sign.
Caldicott, International Physicians for the Prevention of
Nuclear War, “Explosive Arsenals: ‘Bomblets’ to ‘Near-Nukes’” (2017).
Depleted uranium-238 (DU, half-life of 4.5 billion years),
cluster bombs, Bunker Busters, “Near-Nukes,” nuclear option, nuclear-armed
ballistic missiles.
Shields, et al., USAF, “Weather as a Weapon: ‘Owning the
Weather in 2025’” (1996).
Weather modification for military offence and defence, 1977
UN Gen Assembly Resolution prohibiting; climate change mitigation and
adaptation; space war.
Ellsberg, “Nuclear Doomsday” (2009).
Strong case for banning nuc bombs. His horrified analysis of billion deaths from
nuclear blast, fallout, and firestorms,, and discovery of “nuclear
winter.” Calls for Congress to face
facts of scientific findings “of this real potential for self-destructing of
our species and of most others” (236).
THE AFTERMATH (6)
Lanier-Graham, “Graveyards, Waste, and War Junk” (2017). Ecosystem devastation: unexploded munitions,
radioactive residues, chemical weapons, deforestation, erosion, extinction of
wildlife, etc., early US history, WWI, II, Vietnam, Persian Gulf War (6 mil.
Plastic bags discarded each week).
Drummond, “The Pentagon’s Toxic Burn Pits” (2013). Afghan and Iraq wars open burn pits (505
bases in Iraq) fired by jet fuel and extremely damaging to lungs (but only one
species is discussed). Pentagon long
aware (at least from 1978) = asbestos, tobacco companies, and see Carter and
Woodworth on climate science deniers).
Larager, “America’s ‘Downwinders” (2016)
I. Nuclear weapons testing.
II. Uranium Mining
100 atomic bombs tested aboveground, 800 underground. Humans and animals sickened, government knew
radiation consequences and covered up.
Keju-Johnson, “Atomic Islands and ‘Jellyfish Babies’”
(1983)
Using deception, Marshallese of Bikini Atoll and Enewetak
Atoll forced to move to Rongerik Island.
1st hydrogen bomb dropped on Bikini 1954 100o times stronger
then Hiroshima; Marshallese not warned.
Result: deformed babies, widespread cancer.
Willson, “Haunted by Memories of War” (2011)
Narrates visit to farm village just after US napalm bombing
inhabitants. Stats on murdering
civilians during Vietnam War; he estimates some 6 million. Intensely outraged at US immoral and illegal
war. Both legs severed protesting
Trident munitions train.
Brady, “The War Zone That Became a New Eden” (2013) (Korean
DMZ)
The verdant Korean DMZ “home to thousands of species that
are extinct or endangered elsewhere on the peninsula. It is the last haven” of “Korea’s rich
ecological heritage” (257).
