Winning the War but Losing the Environment

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

WINNING THE WAR BUT LOSING THE ENVIRONMENT

In the heat of war, U.S. armed forces have repeatedly justified the used
of environmentally unsound weapons, such as herbicides, cluster bombs,
and uranium penetrators, because they brought immediate tactical
advantages. At least in the case of cluster and depleted uranium (DU)
weapons, this is true. They hurt the enemy. They help protect friendly
forces - except, of course, those hit by friendly fire.

It almost seems unpatriotic to attack the use of such winning weapons,
but in the long run their use is frequently counterproductive. That is,
their environmental impact works against U.S. strategic objectives.
According to the British newspaper the Independent on Sunday (October 3,
1999) http://www.independent.co.uk/frontpage/P1S2.html, the residue of
NATO weapons is creating hazards for the Kosovo civilians whom our
intervention was supposed to protect.

The Independent wrote, "In briefings to international aid workers in
Pristina, one K-For [the NATO-led peacekeeping force] officer has warned
his audience of 'contaminated dust' at the scene of DU munitions
explosions and urged aid officials to stay 150 feet away from targets
hit in NATO air strikes." It adds, "Officially, K-For warns aid workers
to beware of all Kosovo battle sites - especially the danger posed by
unexploded cluster bombs..."

One might argue that the potential long-term risk from NATO weapons
pales in significance against the short-term death and destruction
initiated by Serbian forces earlier this year. That's probably true. But
that's not the question, particularly since NATO intervention didn't
halt the bloodshed until the damage was done. There may indeed have been
more effective and safer ways to aid the Kosovars.

To a large degree, I see the problem is that the U.S. goes to war
without really expecting to recover territory for "friendly civilians."
Rural Vietnam and Laos were essentially free-fire zones for all kinds of
weapons, because the U.S. never expected to throw out the "Viet Cong"
and "Pathet Lao." Our goal, instead, was to punish the populations that
supported those movements and send a warning to other peoples who might
challenge U.S. authority. That's what we did in Iraq, where the
Independent reports high rates of cancer and birth defects, possibly as
a result of the U.S. use of uranium weapons there. That's what we did in
Serbian-dominated areas of Serbia.

Where our enemies and their populations are impacted by the
environmental hazards of modern weapons, I think we should rethink our
choice of military technologies for humanitarian reasons. However, even
if one is unmoved by the suffering or Iraqi, Vietnamese, or Serbian
civilians (war IS hell, after all), there is still cause to use weapons
that do not pose a lasting threat to civilians and the environment. In
choosing such weapons, we will probably find that they pose less of a
long-term threat to our own men and women (remember Agent Orange in
Vietnam and the Gulf War Syndrome). And we will probably do less damage
to our own land and people in manufacturing, testing, and training. 


Lenny Siegel
-- 


Lenny Siegel
Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
c/o PSC, 222B View St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/968-1126
lsiegel@cpeo.org
http://www.cpeo.org