UW Oshkosh Student
Environmental Action Coalition Statement on the Iraq War
December 2002
With the War on Iraq imminent, many peoples' primary concern is the immediate
loss of life as a consequence. However, often overlooked are the long-term damages
that war and its preparations have on the environment.
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There is an old saying, "when you only
have a hammer, everything looks like a nail." It is time we take
away the hammers away from the irresponsible decision-makers who continually
plunge our nation into dangerously destructive wars that are against our
best interest and even the will of many Americans. It is time we realized
that a nation that deems weapons of mass destruction, ecological genocide,
and attacks on civilians as an appropriate means to accomplishing an end
is a nation that will never find peace.
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The Gulf War was one of the most ecologically destructive events in human history.
While the official Iraqi death toll still lingers around 150,000 people, this
tragedy has and will continue to be greatly compounded by the sheer brutality
of the United States assault on the civilian and environmental infrastructure
(i.e. water sanitation facilities, cropland, hospitals) of Iraq. The question
must be asked, if one nation destroys another nation’s access to clean
water, resulting in mass proliferation of waterborne diseases, then prohibits
that nation from repairing it with water purification technologies, how does
this differ from biological warfare?
Similarly, if a predominantly white, affluent nation uses warfare as a means
of dispersing highly toxic waste that would be too costly to treat or store
on domestic soil into the air, water and the food chain of a poorer, darker
nation, isn’t that environmental racism?
Just as we cannot ignore what is happening in Iraq we should place equal concern
on the impacts that preparations for war has on the environment here in the
United States. The Department of Defense is one of the most polluting institutions
in the world, along with its pseudo-military counterpart, the Department of
Energy. These institutions are responsible for tens of thousands of toxic hotspots
in the United States, with massive releases of toxins such as mercury, trichloroethylene,
and ozone depleting chloroflorocarbons and the consumption of an inordinate
amounts of resources (i.e. oil, paper, and precious metals). For instance, in
one hour of flight, an F-16 fighter jet burns twice the amount fuel as the average
American motorists during one year. During the last several years, the United
States military has generated more toxins annually than the top five chemical
companies combined. The polluting tendencies of these institutions has been
shown to disproportionately affect low income and people of color, the same
segment of the population that is actively recruited to fight and die in the
United States military ventures abroad.
There is an old saying, "when you only have a hammer, everything looks
like a nail." It is time we take away the hammers away from the irresponsible
decision-makers who continually plunge our nation into dangerously destructive
wars that are against our best interest and even the will of many Americans.
It is time we realized that a nation that deems weapons of mass destruction,
ecological genocide, and attacks on civilians as an appropriate means to accomplishing
an end is a nation that will never find peace.
In Peace and for Justice,
The UWO Student Environmental Action Coalition
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