OMNI WAR WATCH
WEDNESDAYS, #184, July 3, 2024. Compiled by Dick Bennett.
Neta Crawford. Convergence of US Militarism, Oil Money, and
Climate Catastrophe.
Ralph Nader. Books on War.
Noam Chomsky. US War OF Terror.
CONVERGENCE of US MILITARISM, PERSIAN GULF OIL
MONEY, AND CLIMATE CATASTROPHE
Neta C. Crawford. The Pentagon, Climate Change, and War:
Charting the Rise and Fall of U.S. Military Emissions. October 4, 2022.
Author’s Description:
How the Pentagon became the world’s largest single greenhouse gas emitter
and why it’s not too late to break the link between national security and
fossil fuel consumption.
The military has for years (unlike many politicians) acknowledged that climate
change is real, creating conditions so extreme that some military officials
fear future climate wars. At the same time, the U.S. Department of
Defense—military forces and DOD agencies—is the largest single energy
consumer in the United States and the world’s largest institutional greenhouse
gas emitter. In this eye-opening book, Neta Crawford traces the U.S.
military’s growing consumption of energy and calls for a reconceptualization of
foreign policy and military doctrine. Only such a rethinking, she argues, will
break the link between national security and fossil fuels.
The Pentagon, Climate Change, and War shows how the U.S. economy
and military together have created a deep and long-term cycle of economic
growth, fossil fuel use, and dependency. This cycle has shaped U.S.
military doctrine and, over the past fifty years, has driven the mission to
protect access to Persian Gulf oil. Crawford shows that even as the U.S.
military acknowledged and adapted to human-caused climate change, it resisted
reporting its own greenhouse gas emissions.
Examining the idea of climate change as a “threat multiplier” in national
security, she argues that the United States faces more risk from climate change
than from lost access to Persian Gulf oil—or from most military conflicts. The
most effective way to cut military emissions, Crawford suggests provocatively,
is to rethink U.S. grand strategy, which would enable the United States to reduce
the size and operations of the military.
NADER RECOMMENDS 3 RECENT
BOOKS ON WAR 6-19-24
Nonfiction Summer Reading
Recommendations
War Made Invisible: How America Hides the
Human Toll of Its Military Machine by
Norman Solomon (2023). Get your arms around the ways and means of the military-industrial
complex that President Eisenhower warned Americans about in his farewell
address, with this easy-to-read factual story.
Atomic Days: The Untold Story of the Most
Toxic Place in America by Joshua Frank (2022).
A
devastating account of the dangerous radioactive and explosive horrors under
the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State where private
contractors are soaking up billions of taxpayer dollars yearly and the problems
persist.
The Greatest Evil is Warby
Chris Hedges (2022). For years a war correspondent for the New York Times,
Hedges rings the alarm bells in this short, vivid and memorable treatment of mankind’s
ultimate fatal folly.
The US War OF Terror
Frequent looks
back are essential, for individuals as well as nations, to see where we came
from and why, and whether we made the right choices, and did we have
alternatives. Noam Chomsky’s book, 9-11: Was There an Alternative is a superlative example.
He takes stock of what has happened since 2001, invading Afghanistan and
Iraq, and imagines what might have been accomplished peacefully and lawfully.
Consequences of the US War OF Terror
“In the first ten years of war over 6000 American troops died, and over 550,000
disability claims” (deaths and injuries of US contractors not included). “At least 138,000 civilians have died and
more will die. . . .four indirect deaths to every one direct combat….” So far “7,800,000 refugees and displaced
persons…. erosions in civil liberties at home and human rights violations
abroad. . . .war bills already paid and obligated to be paid are $3.2 trillion.
. . .” MORE
Alternatives
Heinous crimes were committed. Laws
existed for responding to such crimes.
Instead, our warmaking, warmongering, violent leaders, and their
falsely named DEFENSE DEPARTMENT, took the whole nation to war.
A police operation vs. perpetrators of 9-11 would have preserved and enhanced
world approval of US. Instead, we spread
batons and bombs against a world of ENEMIES, until now we have a cowering
population, 800 military bases outside the US in addition to the thousand
inside, fighting five wars simultaneously, terrorizing the world.