“The whole point of the armed forces is to hurt the environment”
It’s looking very likely that the Supreme Court will rule against whales in the Navy sonar case. With the justices arguing that only the Navy knows what constitutes a national crisis in their justification for conducting sonar exercises, and suggesting environmental concerns are over hyped. Most disturbing is this statement from Justice Stephen Breyer, appointed by President Bill Clinton:
“The whole point of the armed forces is to hurt the environment,” he said. “You go on a bombing mission — do they have to prepare an environmental impact statement first?”
I’m surprised this fairly offensive statement didn’t get more press coverage. It’s an insult to everyone serving in the military, who are putting their lives on the line to try and stabilize Iraq and Afghanistan, who made a monumental effort to deliver aid to Indonesia following the tsunami:
U.S. servicemembers have delivered more than 610,000 pounds of relief supplies to the region. In the last 24 hours, U.S. helicopters delivered 5,560 pounds of water, 142,940 pounds of food and 2,100 pounds of supplies.
Understanding how working for stability and security are equivalent to destroying the environment requires a head-spinning abuse of rationality, which is probably the Court’s intention. If they can convince us the purpose of the military is to destroy the environment, then they can argue that the military can ignore any environmental protection, because they are contraindicated to military goals.
I agree that first sentence is pretty skin crawling.
But, the second sentence does sound accurate to me…at least historically…and in actual battles.
I don’t think they thought about the environmental impact with the D-Day shelling (60 Years later Point du Hoc still shows signs of the fighting). I don’t think they thought about negative impacts when they sank old ships and barges to create the Mulberry Harbor at Arromanches (Arromanches 60 Years later).
Maybe they did an environmental assessment at Hiroshima. I know a Manhattan Project scientist thought the land would be barren for 75 years (Of course, he greatly underestimated the resilience of trees).
I suppose, if you have already come to terms with high human casualties, casualty of the land and indigenous species is probably not going to tug too much on your heart strings.
Still on my whole WWII mindset, with the Chartres Cathedral in France, they removed all the stained glass windows and stored them in the countryside to protect that artwork from the German bombers.
Perhaps one day the treasures we gather up and scatter out of war’s way will be in the form of rare fauna and vegetation. A new Noah’s Ark, but instead of saving them from a flood, we save them from ourselves.
Comment by Vicky — October 15, 2008 @ 8:29 pm
On a NON-WWII mindset, even if this sonar is as crucial as it is claimed, I am skeptical that there is only one way for Navy personnel to get properly trained on it.
NASA has somehow managed to get its staff trained for their duties… in **SPACE**.
Comment by Vicky — October 15, 2008 @ 8:38 pm
The whole purpose of Hiroshima was to see what the effects of the “bomb” would be on an “actual” target. With people. It was spared conventional bombing during the whole war(even though it was technically a valid military target), for this very reason. They did an assessment all right, but I doubt it was environmental.
Comment by Chriggy — October 15, 2008 @ 9:33 pm