|
| And What About the War’s
Impact on the Environment? |
| April 6, 2003. |
By Professor Fabio Cupul
University of Guadalajara Puerto Vallarta Campus
 It
is impossible for me to ignore the topic of the war
between the United States and their allies, and Iraq.
The so-called coalition for “freedom” tries
to mask its commercial interests and strategic domination
of a historically belligerent region with that beautiful
word. As justification for starting the war, they claim
that Hussein’s government possesses chemical arms
and weapons of mass destruction when it was the United
States themselves that provided this technology in the
past to the present regime as a means for it to dissuade
its Arab neighbors.
Notwithstanding the preceding statements,
I am in no way justifying the continuance of a government
that has remained in power at the cost of the lives
of its opponents and innocent people, one who has amassed
a fortune through the profitable business of arms trading,
war, contraband and intimidation.
On the other hand, beyond the irreparable
loss of human lives caused by the firepower on both
sides, losses that should never be reduced to simple
numbers as they have devastating effects on the spirit
of entire families, there is another victim, the same
that is coveted for its economic importance, but forgotten
as it is massacred and devastated by the bursts of artillery:
nature.
Ever since ancient times, man has
generated wars to possess natural spaces and resources,
as that is how areas with strategic geographic locations
are called, those that possess water, mineral, food
or even religious assets. Nevertheless, at the end of
the conflict, more than the victory of one side and
the loss of the other, we will always end up with a
major and significant negative impact on the environment
as a result that will affect both winners and losers
in the end.
One famous unfortunate event was
the use of Agent Orange (napalm) by U.S. troops during
the Viet Nam war. Its purpose was to defoliate the trees
so that the Viet Cong could not hide beneath them. The
indiscriminate use of this gas over Vietnamese territory
caused huge expanses of land to become arid, along with
a high incidence of cancer among the population as well
as deformities and malformations in newborns. Agent
Orange is so harmful that American fighters who came
into contact with it in Viet Nam (some 55,000 veterans)
have received $180 Million Dollars in compensation for
their deteriorating health. So we can get an ideal of
how many Vietnamese were affected, and what the economic
cost was for that nation.
Curiously enough, in this ongoing
conflict that seeks to rid Iraq of any trace of chemical
weapons or those of mass destruction, both sides are
using arms and war strategies that are causing short-,
mid- and long-term effects on the population and the
environment that resemble those types of war instruments.
One terrifying example of the foregoing,
without minimizing the horrors that any war implies,
is the use of anti-tank rockets. Those projectiles are
equipped with uranium tips. This is spent uranium, a
by-product of the atomic bomb manufacturing process.
The projectiles are often used in anti-tank battles
and they have the same qualities as the uranium used
in their tips, it is much denser than any other metal,
which is what gives the projectiles the ability to penetrate
the thick shells of tanks. But those same projectiles
also emit radioactive uranium into the environment when
they explode on contact.
Although they swear that we’re
dealing with a surgical war here, the radioactive contamination
will never confine itself to military objectives. It
will dissipate into the environment, affecting the present
population as well as the one that will live in those
areas in the future. Those projectiles were already
used in the Gulf War of 1991 and they may have caused
the increase in the incidence of cancer, miscarriages
and malformations in Iraq. In fact, some Gulf War veterans
suffer from illnesses caused by radioactivity. Those
types of weapons were also used in Serbia and Kosovo.
The present use of those weapons
will surely result in the radioactive contamination
causing illness in those persons who inhabit the zone,
whether they be military or civilians and even the future
business administrators to whom the U.S. has already
handed over the harbor administration of Umm Qsar even
before the war has ended.
Just as happened in 1991, the Persian
Gulf will be the war’s sewer. That is where the
waste of the war’s infrastructure and materials
will go, as well as the rubble of the buildings that
will have been destroyed. There is no question that
marine species will suffer because of this filth and
the much feared “black tide” that results
from damaged oil wells.
Also, the burning of the oil wells
will be one of the most serious environmental problems.
We just have to remember that in 1991 about 500 wells
burned for nearly two years. During the first few months
after the end of that war, they burned between 200,000
and 300,000 tons of crude that produced 0.3 million
tons of smoke, 0.51 million tons of carbon monoxide
and dioxide, and 0.036 million tons of sulfur dioxide.
The incidence of these emissions
on the climate can be significant as it increases the
greenhouse effect on a local and world level, something
that has direct repercussions on the seasons and cycles
of harvests. Also, these same emissions can cause respiratory
problems in the population and changes in the migratory
patterns of birds that use the region of the Tigris
and Euphrates rivers as ideal sites for rest, reproduction
and food. In the same vein, all that smoke can be picked
up by the air currents and fall back to earth in other
parts of the world as acid rain.
I highly doubt that the famous budget
submitted to the American Congress by President Bush
for something around 76,000 billion dollars (enough
to settle Mexico’s external debt), and that the
generals’ war strategy meetings (from which they
send young men on deadly missions, youngsters who aren’t
old enough to drink in public but old enough to take
up arms) take into consideration concrete actions to
mitigate the environmental impact on what was the birthplace
of western civilization, where was born the spiritual
concept of the God to whom Hussein gives homage five
times a day and George W. Bush does once a week at Sunday
services.
cupul@pvmirror.com Archives
by date | 
Current
Weather Report
