OMNI WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #184, July 3, 2024.

 

OMNI WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #184, July 3, 2024.   Compiled by Dick Bennett.

Neta Crawford.  Convergence of US Militarism, Oil Money, and Climate Catastrophe.
Ralph Nader.  Books on War.
Noam Chomsky.  US War OF Terror.

 

 CONVERGENCE of US MILITARISM, PERSIAN GULF OIL MONEY, AND CLIMATE CATASTROPHE

Neta C. Crawford.    The Pentagon, Climate Change, and War: Charting the Rise and Fall of U.S. Military Emissions.   October 4, 2022.

Author’s Description:
How the Pentagon became the world’s largest single greenhouse gas emitter and why it’s not too late to break the link between national security and fossil fuel consumption.

The military has for years (unlike many politicians) acknowledged that climate change is real, creating conditions so extreme that some military officials fear future climate wars. At the same time, the U.S. Department of Defense—military forces and DOD agencies—is the largest single energy consumer in the United States and the world’s largest institutional greenhouse gas emitter. In this eye-opening book, Neta Crawford traces the U.S. military’s growing consumption of energy and calls for a reconceptualization of foreign policy and military doctrine. Only such a rethinking, she argues, will break the link between national security and fossil fuels.

The Pentagon, Climate Change, and War shows how the U.S. economy and military together have created a deep and long-term cycle of economic growth, fossil fuel use, and dependency. This cycle has shaped U.S. military doctrine and, over the past fifty years, has driven the mission to protect access to Persian Gulf oil. Crawford shows that even as the U.S. military acknowledged and adapted to human-caused climate change, it resisted reporting its own greenhouse gas emissions.

Examining the idea of climate change as a “threat multiplier” in national security, she argues that the United States faces more risk from climate change than from lost access to Persian Gulf oil—or from most military conflicts. The most effective way to cut military emissions, Crawford suggests provocatively, is to rethink U.S. grand strategy, which would enable the United States to reduce the size and operations of the military.

 

NADER RECOMMENDS 3 RECENT BOOKS ON WAR  6-19-24

Nonfiction Summer Reading Recommendations

War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine by Norman Solomon (2023). Get your arms around the ways and means of the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned Americans about in his farewell address, with this easy-to-read factual story.

Atomic Days: The Untold Story of the Most Toxic Place in America by Joshua Frank (2022). A devastating account of the dangerous radioactive and explosive horrors under the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State where private contractors are soaking up billions of taxpayer dollars yearly and the problems persist.

The Greatest Evil is War by Chris Hedges (2022). For years a war correspondent for the New York Times, Hedges rings the alarm bells in this short, vivid and memorable treatment of mankind’s ultimate fatal folly.

 

The US War OF Terror

    Frequent looks back are essential, for individuals as well as nations, to see where we came from and why, and whether we made the right choices, and did we have alternatives.  Noam Chomsky’s book, 9-11: Was There an Alternative is a superlative example.   He takes stock of what has happened since 2001, invading Afghanistan and Iraq, and imagines what might have been accomplished peacefully and lawfully.

Consequences of the US War OF Terror
“In the first ten years of war over 6000 American troops died, and over 550,000 disability claims” (deaths and injuries of US contractors not included).  “At least 138,000 civilians have died and more will die. . . .four indirect deaths to every one direct combat….”   So far “7,800,000 refugees and displaced persons…. erosions in civil liberties at home and human rights violations abroad. . . .war bills already paid and obligated to be paid are $3.2 trillion. . . .”  MORE

Alternatives
Heinous crimes were committed.  Laws existed for responding to such crimes.  Instead, our warmaking, warmongering, violent leaders, and their falsely named DEFENSE DEPARTMENT, took the whole nation to war.
A police operation vs. perpetrators of 9-11 would have preserved and enhanced world approval of US.  Instead, we spread batons and bombs against a world of ENEMIES, until now we have a cowering population, 800 military bases outside the US in addition to the thousand inside, fighting five wars simultaneously, terrorizing the world.

 

END WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #184, July 3, 2024.