The only one to mention war at Congressman Jim McGovern’s “town hall” meeting in Northampton on Saturday, was Jim McGovern.
People waited patiently in a long line at the microphone to talk about refugees, the Trump Cabinet picks, about corruption and conflict of interest, about impeachment, 9/11, re-organizing the Democratic party, about climate change and health care and about strategies for resistance.
They covered lots of issues, but no one mentioned war or spoke of what we should be doing to achieve peace.
McGovern brought it up himself. “And then there is war,” he said. “We have these wars that go on and on. They’re expanding, and we’re not talking about this in the Congress. We’re operating without Congressional approval or authorization and this concerns me.”
I got up and walked to the end of the line, but they had already designated a “last speaker” so I returned to my seat.
Ending war — especially the ongoing, now seemingly forgotten war in Iraq — is my issue, and like Jim McGovern I wonder why others are not demanding we put an end to it. War and militarism affect every issue, including the one that seems most on people’s minds — climate change. Climate change is impacted by war; and together they have a profoundly negative impact on health.
Health is a basic human right. Beyond that, common sense tells us good health — which the World health Organization defines as “…a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”— is everything.
Lack of good health stands in the way of personal and collective growth, development and achievement. War, rampant militarism and climate change threatens lives every day. They threaten the present and future health of individuals, of communities, of countries and of the planet.
If we want to preserve life and health, if we want to stem climate change, we should work to shrink our military and war-making infrastructure. We should work to put an end to war.
The U.S. military is the world’s worst polluter, according to Professor Barry Sanders — twice nominated for a Pulitzer Prize — and author of “The Green Zone: The Environmental Crisis of Militarism” (2009). The main culprit is fuel. A variety of fuels — some more polluting and toxic than others — are consumed at staggering levels by the U.S. military to operate and maintain its vast number of bases, troops, and land, sea and air vehicles.
As a result, according to Sanders, the U.S. military alone is responsible for some 5 percent of global pollution but this does not “…figure into any of the pollution figures that the country makes public.”
If the acknowledged figure for the U.S. contribution to global pollution was 25 percent when Sanders was writing this book, it means that in reality, we were “…sending aloft a bit more than 30 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases” in the mid-2000s.
Iraq — past and present involvement — has been simmering under a lid on the back burner for many years. The country has been in a health “crisis” for decades.
“Who cares about Iraq and Iraqis?” my Iraqi friends and colleagues ask. Who indeed? It turns out Barry Sanders cares about Iraq. His book is a well-researched cautionary tale, using U.S. involvement in Iraq and outcomes suffered by that country and the Iraqi people, to expose a critical factor in the looming environmental crisis. If you want some very sobering but useful information about the relationship of war to the climate crisis, I suggest you read the book. It’s 10 years old, but still relevant on a topic few seem to know about.
War and the war-making infrastructure that supports it is contributing to the destruction of the planet. Surely we need to reawaken our anti-war sentiments and add war and militarism to our list of critical concerns.
Thank you Congressman McGovern for providing leadership on this issue.
Claudia Lefko, of Northampton, coordinates “Baghdad Resolve: An International Collaboration to Improve Cancer Care in Iraq,” with Dr. Mazin Al-Jadiry at Children’s Welfare Teaching Hospital in Medical City Baghdad.