Wars are becoming increasingly destructive to the planet and to civilian life. In a recent interview by Yes Magazine, Major Doug Rokke, a health physicist who was a assigned to a depleted uranium (DU) assessment team after the Gulf War, stated: “War has become obsolete, because we can’t deal with the consequences on our warriors or the environment, but more important, on the non-combatants. When you reach a point in war when the contamination and the health effects of war can’t be cleaned up because of the weapons you use, and medical care can’t be given to the soldiers who participated in the war on either side or to the civilians affected, then it’s time for peace.” The question we can ask along with Rokke is, have the environmental and humanitarian consequences of war become so great that it is no longer an ethical option?
At one time wars were fought out by opposing armies. Battlefields may have been ugly but they could be cleaned up and when peace resumed, the land would be farmed again and towns and villages rebuilt. As military technology has advanced, civilian casualties have increased and the environment often left beyond repair. The use of defoliants and uranium metal, the bombing of chemical, petrochemical, pharmaceutical and nuclear plants and the targeting of civilian infrastructure has meant a huge environmental and humanitarian toll - to a degree that when the war ends, the killing has only just begun.
At one time wars were fought out by opposing armies. Battlefields may have been ugly but they could be cleaned up and when peace resumed, the land would be farmed again and towns and villages rebuilt. As military technology has advanced, civilian casualties have increased and the environment often left beyond repair. The use of defoliants and uranium metal, the bombing of chemical, petrochemical, pharmaceutical and nuclear plants and the targeting of civilian infrastructure has meant a huge environmental and humanitarian toll - to a degree that when the war ends, the killing has only just begun.