By JULIA LAKEY
I stopped cold when I heard the news: For 2008, one-third of the U.S. budget will be used for military purposes. This has not occurred since World War II and is as much as all the military budgets of all the other nations combined.
What can be devoted to healing the planet and responding to human needs when military use gobbles up so many resources? Pentagon officials claim that the United States will need to be a military presence in Iraq for at least a decade, and the situation in Afghanistan continues unraveling, not stabilizing.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, as a general and then our president, saw this danger. “Every gun that’s made, every warship launched, and every rocket fired signifies a theft from all those who hunger and are not fed . . . This world in arms . . . is spending the hopes of its children,” he said.
“The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict” is a recently released book detailing the long-term costs of the current war. The authors are Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel economics laureate, and Linda Bilmes, an economics professor.
While the economic costs are staggering and still unpaid as our debt rises, the human costs of our current war deeply sadden me. Coming of age during the Vietnam era, I saw friends protest or leave the country, and I went to funerals for schoolmates.
Several researchers have found that more Vietnam vets died from suicide after they returned home than in combat. (Official U.S. documentation methods dispute the high suicide rate, but they do not count single-person fatal “accidents” and self-inflicted gunshot wounds without a suicide note.)
Iraq and Afghanistan vets face even more uncertainty, since today’s advanced medical procedures mean more damaged soldiers are surviving their wounds. Estimates place 40 percent of vets returning from the current war in Iraq and Afghanistan as needing disability benefits. From the Gulf War of 1991, more than 200,000 U.S. vets are disabled, which amounts to one in three servicemen and women.
The losses to American families are still unfolding in our current war: Nearly 4,000 American families have buried a loved one who served in Iraq.
The suffering for the Iraqi people is unimaginable. Estimates range from 30,000 to one million civilians killed over the last five years. The extent of physical and emotional trauma is incalculable.
Two million Iraqis have been displaced from their homes. Unemployment is more than 60 percent in Iraq, while more than 40 percent of Iraqis live on less than $1 per day, which is severe poverty. Another two million have fled the country since occupation began. Many are fleeing systematic persecution by militias, insurgents and criminals. Those fleeing who have helped coalition forces face dangers, but few refugees are receiving any protection, and the neighboring nations swelling with Iraqi refugees could evict these unwanted visitors at any time.
We’ve seen evidence of the physical destruction in Baghdad and other major Iraqi cities and the creation of walled sections. American soldiers and the contractors, many of whom serve as mercenary fighters, live within walled protection. Major cities have been carved up into ethnically cleansed security zones defined by walls, barriers and checkpoints.
The greatest and longest-lasting environmental destruction comes from depleted uranium (DU) in armaments. More than 300 tons of DU were discharged by British and American troops in 1991, primarily in armor-piercing shells that blasted through vehicles.
The current war has blanketed more than 1,500 tons of these deadly particles, primarily in Iraq’s cities through new applications in large bombs and in guided missiles. DU particles can cause cancer or deform children. Use of DU has been called a war crime since the United Nations Human Rights Tribunals in the late 1990s classified these munitions as illegal weapons of mass destruction. American and British officials have denied harm from this radioactive dust and suppressed research. So many deformed babies have been born that many Iraqi mothers first ask, “Is my baby normal?” after birth. These effects aren’t necessarily limited to returning vets or the Iraqi people: Contamination can be swept worldwide by wind.
Vets returning to their Ameri-can communities can face incredibly difficult readjustments. As one vet commented, “War is addicting.” How do we make places in our lives for their stories and their uncertainty of acceptance? Many of my Vietnam vet friends avoided any conversations about their war experiences. Vets today must deal with their recent traumas, both physical and emotional.
How can we offer healing and reconciliation? How will we help our vets, personnel in active service, their families and the people of Iraq? Those decisions help us deal with the harm done in the name of freedom.
— Julia Lakey is an Island activist.
