Embodiment of War
“From the Civil War to the War on Terror, the militarization and destruction of the human body has been –and continues to be– the defining feature of armed conflict.” –John Kinder, AT WAR, p. 217
“However, the greatest battlefield threat to American life and limb has been the high-speed projection of chunks of metal –whether in the form of Civil War-era machine-gun bullets, World War II-era exploding shells, or shrapnel from homemade IEDs. Since the introduction of gunpowder-based weapons in the Middle Ages, arms manufacturers have waged a relentless campaign to fine-tune the body-shredding capacity of military weapons.” –John Kinder, AT WAR, p. 227
“Although more than a million U.S. combatants have died in military campaigns since 1861, the vast majority of American bodies have returned from war alive, if not always in one piece.” –John Kinder, AT WAR, p. 232
“As of January 2017, more than fifteen years since the start of the War on Terror, nearly 6,900 American combatants have died fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere in the Middle East….In a 2015 joint report, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Physicians for Global Survival, and the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War conservatively estimate that 1.3 million people have died as a result of U.S.-led campaigns in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan since September 11, 2001. In all of world history, no nation has been capable of inflicting mass death on such a scale while exposing so few of its citizens to the dangers of combat.” –John Kinder, AT WAR, p. 235
War and the Environment
- Metals
- Timber
- Rubber
- Fossil Fuels
- Bases (land)
- Chemical Weapons
“And so the tension continues, between the perennial environmental costs of military operations –which steadily intensify as the destructive power and efficiency of weapons accelerate– and the increasing efforts of military planners and managers to mitigate those costs. It is difficult to be sure what the environmental costs have been in any particular case, because they are so complex and systemic. We are still struggling to comprehend the full legacy of the Vietnam War, and the closer we come to understanding recent and ongoing wars, the more difficult it is, since it is a risky task to study the impacts on the ground. But one thing is evident; the environmental dimensions of war and the preparation for war must not be ignored.” –Richard Tucker, AT WAR, p. 254