Escalation in Afghanistan:
What’s the carbon/health footprint of another senseless war?
By Harvey Wasserman / The Rag Blog / November 30, 2009
The Afghan War may now doom our ability both to cope with the global climate crisis and to fairly deliver health care in this country.
If Barack Obama announces an escalation, Copenhagen and the Climate Bill will become meaningless. And the prospects for a single-payer health care system or even a token public option will disappear.
At 11 p.m. Tuesday, December 1 — after Obama’s speech — we in central Ohio will gather at the Federal Building to either celebrate Obama’s courageous decision against escalation, or to inaugurate what will certainly be hard years of bitter civil struggle against yet another senseless war. Texans for Peace, Freepress.org, Solartopia.org, and other peace, green and social justice organizations ask others around the world to consider joining us in your own home towns.
If there is no escalation, we can celebrate a small step forward in Copenhagen, where Obama has said he will join with Chinese leadership in a 17% reduction in carbon emissions. Joining with the Chinese in setting ANY target is good global politics.
But this is nowhere near enough. Nor is it anywhere near what’s possible.
The rapid advance of renewable and efficient technologies is forcing nuclear power and fossil fuels out of the marketplace. In one of humankind’s great technological revolutions, a future that is carbon/nuclear free has become tangible and doable.
Such a Solartopian conversion is the surest route to economic security and a full employment economy… and to peace.
But if Obama escalates, in a nation with at least one foot already deep in bankruptcy, the resources for that conversion will disappear. In a toxic, polarized wartime atmosphere, the Climate Bill could well degenerate into a cynical faux green smokescreen for a relapse to the failed experiment with atomic reactors.
The war would also come with a carbon burst. How will the massive emissions created by 100,000-plus soldiers in wartime be counted in the 17% reduction rubric? Will the HumVees be converted to hybrids? What is the carbon impact of Predator bombs that destroy Afghan families and villages?
Likewise the war will create yet another wave of human casualties to strain a health care system already at the breaking point. The $1 million a year estimate for every solider sent to Afghanistan does not begin to cover the additional fortunes spent to try — so often unsuccessfully — to make these good people whole again when they return.
The $2 or $3 trillion an escalated war is likely to cost could more than fund a single-payer system to cover every American citizen. Escalation turns that money into bombs and bullets that kill rather than heal.
It is the business of war, however it’s packaged, to destroy land and people.
We saw what the Vietnam War did to the dream of a Great Society. The poisons spread by an escalated Afghan war would take decades to heal. It would signal a nation firmly in the death grip of corporations and the military.
The certainties are few but staggering:
As with every foreign conqueror since Alexander the Great, the American presence in the Graveyard of Great Powers will fail.
Sending more troops is an escalation, whether packaged with an “exit strategy” or not; intentions to leave nearly always fail to materialize and entrenched troops rarely leave.
U.S. escalation there will make us more, not less, vulnerable to terrorism.
The money to pay for this war could otherwise fund the transition to a carbon/nuke free economy, and to a truly workable national health care system.
But the United States does not have the human, political or financial resources to wage this war while also solving the climate and health crisis.
We cannot lose track of our goals — peace, a planet to live on, social justice, freedom and the promise of what’s beyond. We will not surrender that vision to hard times.
So we’ll gather Tuesday night. Let’s hope we have something to celebrate. We already know what we have to fight for.
[Harvey Wasserman’s History of the U.S. is at www.harveywasserman.com, along with Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth. Harvey is senior editor of Freepress.org, where this article also appears.]
Go to Texans for Peace for the latest information about Texas actions protesting the Afghanistan escalation.
Really?
I mean now it seems that this is just a bunch of random excuses on what the mission in Afghanistan should fail.
One day it is this, the next that, and it just seems to what ever is convenient at the time.
Considering the incident over this weekend do you really think people are going to continue to believe that this is nothing more then a attempted money grab for their own gains regardless of if the Afghanistan mission is working just or otherwise.
You are going to find that the business of invasion and occupation of soverign people is a dangerous, disgusting business…in which the invader and occupier most often not only loses, but incites the collapse of his own nation.
But you should be very happy now because Barack Obama has miraculously transformed into your go to guy, eh?
War is always dangerous, you just do what you can to make it through. Also I doubt that the US will fall anytime soon.
He said he was going to escalate the war in Afghanistan before he even got elected. I remember that being the silver lining when he won.
Tell you what, when I get sent to Afghanistan I will give this website reports on what is happening with photos and everything.
MS is back and with a vengence, I missed you. Your comments are always a fountain of misinformation, don't stop. I have two questions first posed by Phil Ochs 40+ years ago, I wonder if there are present day answers and if you have them. 1. I'd like to ask you what you are trying to defend? 2. I like to ask you what you think you're going to win? Back when I was in Uncle Sams
I mean here is the deal, if you want to talk about global warming that is one thing. But to try to use it as a reason to leave?
The thing that reall touched a nerve was this;
The war would also come with a carbon burst. How will the massive emissions created by 100,000-plus soldiers in wartime be counted in the 17% reduction rubric? Will the HumVees be converted to
MS, I gotta agree with you about the global warming crap, that is a veeery weak argument and one fraught with pitfalls. I want to thank you for not voting, as I always encourage everyone to do…(to not do?) Perhaps your disinterest in politics of the republican/democrat kind means you are an anarchist like us?
I am not a anarchist, but a big believer in "if you want something done right, you got to do it yourself" and Murphy s Law.
Just more of a hands on approach on things.