Another
life lost… just another number in the casualty count until it strikes close to
home. Though I’m not related (in any conventional sense of the word), I felt a
father’s pain when I saw the photograph in the local paper. The man stood at
the airport, hand on heart in salute, watching an
honor guard bear his son’s flag-draped casket. The look on his face is
unforgettable, and even the memory of it moves me to tears. I’ve heard it said
that no parent should have to bury his child; his expression bears witness to
that truth.
The
parents of American fallen soldiers can temper their grief with pride, with the
conviction that their children went forth with courage and good intentions. But
the larger tragedy, unfolding with greater horror every day, is the Iraq war
itself. With his various rationales for the war all cut loose from reality,
Bush has resorted to the low tactic of equating his war with the honor of those
who do the fighting. Congress wants to cut funding for “the troops”, he says, as
if all those young men and women had decided on their own to invade and occupy
Iraq.
Someone
once said, “the first casualty when war comes is
truth.” Whether it’s a government’s deliberate spreading of lies or the public’s
willingness to believe them, war brings out this darker side of our nature. A
few days before last month’s global warming rally, a local Republican pol emailed the leader of a progressive group, advising him
to not speak at the event because a controversial young anti-war activist was
also on the speakers list. In addition to passing along some unsubstantiated
allegations about the behavior of the activist at an anti-war demonstration, he
questioned the relevance of Iraq war opposition to the cause of climate
protection.
I am happy
to report that all three of these people ended up attending the rally, a
hopeful sign that this issue will transcend partisan politics. And I’m also
happy to see that the quintessential conservative, George Will, has adopted a
key tenet of progressive policy. In his April 12 column, Will points out how
the cost is “higher than the cost of providing the entire world with clean
drinking water and sanitation, which would prevent 2 million deaths (from
diseases like infant diarrhea) a year and prevent half a billion people from
becoming seriously ill each year.” Before you celebrate the dawning of the Age
of Aquarius, I should point out I was teasing-- Will was referring to one
scientist’s projection of the U.S. cost of complying with the Kyoto treaty, not
about the cost of a few more months of the Iraq war.
But our
*local* conservative is smart enough to figure out how global warming and the
Iraq war are deeply connected. First, the Pentagon is the nation’s top
purchaser of oil. Second, if we decide to forego Iraqi (and Iranian) oil, we
not only keep it out of the atmosphere, we have one less reason to keep the
troops over there. Third, if we can avoid the consequences of abrupt climate
change – the dislocation, drought, and desperation that will surely swell the
ranks of terrorists – we will need far less money for military defenses. Fourth,
the money we spend on war could be better invested, as George Will
inadvertently suggests, on satisfying basic human needs at home and abroad, on
investing in the ecological health that will sustain the socio/political health
that will prevent those expensive wars in the first place. Firth, that money will
be needed for mitigating global warming impacts, like flooding of coastal
cities. If we fail to address climate change, no amount of war spending will
protect us; we will lose our liberty along with our land.
It’s time
revive the popular science fiction theme of earthlings uniting against a common
extraterrestrial enemy, along with the often-repeated Pogo slogan “we have met
the enemy and he is us.” One homeland needs defending above all others: our
earth. And the troops are already there.