Climate Issues Tied to U.S. Security
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 26, 2008; A02
No one really knows what the Pentagon actually spends on hardware, not even the Pentagon. As Rumsfeld famously said on the day before 9-11, they can’t even find a thousand-billion in expenditures.
They have misplaced enough money to fund entirely the rest of the planet’s military spending for two and a half years.
Yet President George W. Bush’s Pentagon spending request for the new fiscal year, 2008, is above $660 billion, up 20% from up 20% from up 20% and still the ravenous complain. Not all hunger is related to food.
Readiness for what?
Does this mean we may finally begin to reverse the ecologic disaster that has been, for the most part, due to our making? Certainly not for humanitarian or economic or health or reasons of the decline of the planet’s diversity–but because we can no longer fight in a diminished arena.
Save the Earth–it’s a military duty.
It’s been pretty obvious, as Africa starves, is decimated by HIV and struggles with the likes of Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, that we don’t really give a rat’s ass what happens to the poor of the world, particularly in Africa.
That of course, was before we actually had an Africa Command–a name that is of itself an indicator of what plans we have for Africa. One can but wonder how well received a Chinese or Russian Americas Command would be by Washington?
But that is the grist for another mill.
. . . The United States must “plan for growing immigration pressures,” the report said, in part because almost a fourth of the countries with the greatest percentage of low-level coastal zones are in the Caribbean. The report noted that many U.S. military installations near the coast will be at “increasing risk of damage” from floods in coming years.
We can no doubt deal with the immigration issues by adding a few feet to our Immigration Wall and upgrading technology as it becomes available. The clear and present danger is to American 2nd and 3rd homes in such formerly lovely places as Bermuda, Jamaica and Barbados. The 27,000 families in the U.S. with a net worth over $30 million are going to shit a brick when they become Iowa-like flood victims.
Iraq and Afghanistan? You mean those island nations?