Externalities in a corporate-military world

A paper from scientists at the University of Washington and Simon Fraser University confirms that childhood Leukemia rates in the Iraqi province of Basra have more than doubled in the past 15 years. According to the senior author of the paper Tim Takaro of SFU “We hope our calculations pave the way for investigating why the rates have climbed so high. We also need to know why they are higher than the rates found in Kuwait, the European Union or the United States.” Now, I'm the first to admit that I'm more of a qualitative researcher than quantitative one but I'd wager that these childhood Leukemia rates can be tied to a few other things going on in Iraq over the past two decades. I'd bet that uranium depleted bombs, chromium poisoned dust and mountains of toxic burning garbage might also factor in. If you thought externalities were bad in the corporate world, you should see the corporate-military world.

There is an immaturity to war, in fact it might be the most immature of human habits. Of course it would be naive of me to leave it at that. War is also the manipulation of large groups of people and capital on the opinion of a few and for the benefit of even fewer.

A recent LA Times article looked at the practice of burn pits in Iraq, which private military contractor Kellog Brown and Root (KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton) used as an ad hoc waste management strategy, when one has to assume, inept planning, loss of profitability or complete lack of morals left them with few other options. Supposed to be a stopgap measure, the burning has continued on unchecked. Many soldiers and contractors now suffer from a vast array of health problems ranging from leukemia, lymphoma, congestive heart problems, neurological conditions, bronchitis, skin rashes and sleep disorders. Legal action has been taken, including nine class action lawsuits which have been filed against KBR, but as always it looks like the moral and ethical victory will take a long and arduous uphill battle.

As quoted in the LA Times, John Wilson of the advocacy group Disabled American Veterans states "The military needs to step up and address this problem...the fumes emanating from the pits could become the Agent Orange of the current war zone."

Words like that, recalling the last public relations nightmare caused by a toxic externality, signal that the PR dueling has ramped up. Agent Orange was of course the chemical weapon (dioxin laden herbicide) that helped kill half a million people in the Vietnam war and disfigured thousands more. Despite the horrific damage done by Agent Orange several class action lawsuits against the US military were all dismissed. Chemical giants Monsanto and Dow, who created the toxic herbicide, were successfully sued in different lawsuits but it ended up being a negligible amount when awarded to some sick veterans, considering the slow chronically painful deaths they experience. It appears the courts have already begun the tossing and dismissing of veteran and civilian health concerns as an Indiana Judge threw out a recent case against KBR involving a chromium dust filled plant that American contractors were uninformed was a toxic work environment. One positive development (perhaps) is that a health panel has begun looking into the issues around the recent Iraq operations, overseen by the Department of Veteran Affairs. Will it be another 911 Commission though? But back to KBR's burn pits and the children of Iraq.

Items burned in the pits have included medical waste, plastics, computer parts, oil, lubricants, paint, tires and foam cups, according to soldiers and contractors. Some say amputated body parts from Iraqi patients were burned in Balad, site of a large U.S. military hospital. The pit in Balad was a full 10-acres. 1o acres of toxic burning shit. And all around these pits for years now, cancerous uranium depleted shells have been raining down on these children and American military personnel. The military leaders fought hard to make sure they could use these uranium depleted bombs which supposedly gave them an advantage the first time they pulverized southern Iraq in the early 1990s. We can be sure all that depleted uranium just went through the ecosystem, blew away in the wind or was rinsed off by the rain though, right? I mean those kids with Leukemia were born a full ten years after the first uranium shower, and I don't know what the half-life of weapons grade uranium is but it can't be that long.

So while I congratulate researchers at SFU and U of W for their quantitative discovery, I believe that when looking qualitatively at the insane toxic war that has been waged in Iraq it becomes obvious that man made lakes of burning garbage, millions of uranium soaked shells and heavy metal particulates wafting in the air will certainly cause serious health problems in children. And in soldiers, military contractors, animals, water and crops too for that matter. Maybe it should just stop? Maybe they should clean it up, properly.

While the decision makers who send soldiers to these hellish landscapes might be clinical and deliberate in their thinking, there is a hysteria in war that seems to cloud reason, distort logic, and suffocate human progress. Maybe the Bush Administration and their royal, religious and corporate friends knew full well the hell that would be loosed with any invasion. So before it begins some colonel stands in front of the media demonstrating the moral and ethical accuracy of smart bombs, convincing us the face of war is becoming more humanitarian, more compassionate and precise. The charm offensive, it really is offensive isn't it? 8 years later soldiers are coming home half rotten with disease, child cancer rates have doubled and a whole generation of Arabic youth is growing up with more hatred of the west than ever before. How could we let this happen? How were we duped once again? We said no, emphatically. Millions and millions of people in 800 cities around the world protested the invasion and yet it still happened. Our ethics were obvious but our power was illusory. We thought they would listen, the "leaders". So where is our power? And how can we assert it? (for another post I suppose)

The culture of war is a hysterical reactionary stupor utilizing unparalleled logistical management to create sickness, death and destruction on both the "winning" and losing sides. If we as a civilization are in our adolescence, then we're at that dangerous and destructive point where an adolescent should probably reach out for help; but we have no one to help us, we only have ourselves. We have to learn responsibility, for this planet, for the living creatures and systems at work, and for our own kind. KBR managing waste through burn pits is akin to a teenager stuffing all their filthy clothes, pizza boxes and dirty plates under their bed. Actually it's more like a teenager, instead of cleaning their bedroom at all, just burning everything in a pile. Fumes from smoldering plastic and garbage filling their room with a choking haze, with a strong chance of burning the rest of the house down too. The careless immaturity of war once again. Externalities, in all their forms, represent a complete lack of responsibility or accountability. Like an apathetic child who can't comprehend the damage from their actions, these PMCs like KBR, have made so many mistakes and so many poor decisions with horrific consequences. So many children, soldiers and innocent civilians have been sickened, disfigured and maimed by the immaturity and indecency of war- and its many vendors. We need to question how any leaders eager for war can be considered moral or ethical. And how can it ever be in the interest of the people when the masses always suffer it, every last one of us. The ones that fight, the ones who pay, and the ones who bury their friends and family.

War is what happens when thinking stops, when we are prevented from coming to a reasonable solution for any problem based on our capacity for compromise, creativity and innovation. And leaders make that choice for us, despite our protest. I love Michael Bakunin's sentiment that the most powerful assets we posses as humans are the power to reason and the desire to rebel. Of course in order to have a healthy functioning society we also have to have a power to reason and desire to co-operate. Either by hysteria or by manipulation, when it comes to war too many of us are prevented from being rational about its reasons and rebelling when we know its consequences. We should be more aggressive, more forceful, and more frightening the next time our leaders try to pull the wool over us. We can't settle for war, we can't accept it. It is an insult to our intelligence and disrespects the value of our lives.

In the 21st century we have the technological knowledge of how to create vast quantities of energy and food. We can reclaim water, we can build better cities, we can provide for every person on this planet if we really wanted to. Imagine what we could do if we put the trillions of dollars and the impressive logistical know-how that it takes to operate this war into making the world a better more livable and equitable place? Food security, water security, education, disease research, energy production, climate change, imagine if we put a trillion dollars and the man hours that have gone into making Iraq a toxic wasteland into any one of these pressing issues. Instead, we'll likely just have another war down the road. At this point I remain pessimistic that our swords will be transformed into plowshares. Too many leaders and thinkers insist on keeping us in the Hobbesian world. The voice of Benjamin Franklin echoing in the halls of power that "Those who beat their swords into plowshares will end up plowing for those who did not." And while at the time American leaders like Franklin were fighting to end the tyranny of royal rule and build a democratic utopia, today we stand with our toes patriotically curled over the edge of hell because this moral militarism.

Eight thousand years of human civilization and you'd think we would be close to overcoming the animal-human, the one hoarding food and craving territory, the one that justifies murders based on fairy tales written a millennium ago, the animal-human that flings its own shit and beats its babies to death, drunk with ignorance. One would think that given this much time we would be able to back away from the cliff but no, here we stand, the flames baking our toenails.

Like cave-men invading camps for fire, the US banged its chest in primitive rage and unleashed a toxic circus on the people of Iraq and its own soldiers, and for what? Oil? Strategic control of geography?Retribution for 9/11? Does anyone even remember what the hell they said they were going into Iraq for? Yellowcake from Nigeria? Well they never found a single weapon of mass destruction, and no yellowcake, but it took mass destruction for them to do it. If there wasn't enough weapons grade uranium to make a bomb before the US invaded Iraq there probably is today. The only problem is that it's now stuck in all those children.


Asteroid now.