Seeing the Round Corners

April 17, 2017

   For the next few weeks, columns from the archives will appear while this writer takes a break to get a brand new shoulder. Enjoy!

THE WAGES OF WAR                                        July 14, 2006

Wars have always been off in some, far, distant land for present-day Americans, at least until the Gulf War in 1991, and now the one in Iraq. Laptops and cell phones have brought the war home.

There are actually generations of people in third world countries who have known nothing but war – war is the way of life for them. In Myanmar, a separatist group known as the Karen people have been at war since 1948, a “struggle” that is said to be the oldest on record.

Are wars by the people? For the people? Hardly! They are by and for the generals, diplomats and politicians. Has there ever been a war end where the fighting soldier signed the peace agreement? Hardly! Of course, the fighting soldier can’t do that sort of thing.

When a path such as war becomes a lifestyle, the government seems incapable or unwilling to get back on the right path, totally unaware or unable to determine what that is – “it’s always been this way.”

Is the path this nation has been on any different in its zeal to solve the energy crisis? Hardly!

Ethanol is almost suddenly the “hot” answer to a crisis this nation has been in for how long, although the crisis is just now being acknowledged. Remember the gasoline lines in the early 1970’s. Yet the incredible amount of water to produce ethanol is not being acknowledged, not even right here in the West where water has been and will most likely always be in critically short supply.

True, corn farmers are delighted at the prospect of such an expanded, almost unlimited market for their product BUT corn does not grow all that great without water. As farmers in eastern Colorado who depended on irrigation wells to water their crops learned the hard way, the State can take away “that which God giveth.” If ethanol is THE answer to America’s energy crisis, or even part of the answer, where will the water come from in the West?

Many of the nation’s politicians and political analysts blame the Gulf War and the war in Iraq on oil, and America being “forced” to protect its supply of oil, at the cost of how many billions of dollars?

Yet the justification for drilling on public lands throughout this country, in delicate areas of Alaska and the Artic is the potential billions of barrels of oil underneath America’s own soil. One only has to drive the roads of just two areas of America – the northeastern section of Colorado and along the Interstate highway through Kansas. Counting the oil/gas well pumps setting idle will make a reasonable person wonder why.

How much of the oil taken from American soil or the Gulf of Mexico is put to use by America or stored here in America? The figures are dismal! More on that in a future column.

Back to the wages of war – World War I and World War II seemed for a time to result in the beginning of a world attitude that war does not solve the problems that presumably caused it.

At the end of World War I, Woodrow Wilson acclaimed the founding of the League of Nations as the hope there would never again be the ravages of such a war, yet just 25 short years thereafter, World War II began.

Casualties in World War I were estimated at 11,016,000. In World War II, the number was 59,038,000.

Lest we forget the non-wars otherwise known as “conflicts.” The Korean one claimed 54,246 lives. Vietnam, the most horrifying nightmare this country has ever wreaked on its people. Can anyone in this country give a sane reason for Vietnam? The senseless loss of lives, the horrendous number of soldiers who returned to American soil, their sacrifices largely ignored, most egregiously by their own government when it comes to veterans’ services.

The toll on lives from post traumatic stress syndrome will never be known, nor will the number if Vietnam veterans who are homeless and neglected by their own government. Yet, cutting the budget for veterans’ services is always popular in Washington.

Foreign aid to those countries that seem to despise Americans continues on an ever escalating scale with what to show for it. The inability by those countries to show where the money went is ignored. No accountability procedures are in place to prevent corrupt government officials from pocketing whatever they wish to do.

Receiving only a modest amount of press coverage, the World Trade Organization (WTO), with 149 members, has had little success in brokering a trade agreement that would ostensibly lower or remove trade barriers for farm and manufactured goods in developing or third world countries.

Developing countries believe that lowing trade barriers will help with eliminating horrendous poverty in their countries, and blame the United States and EU members for the total lack of progress in completing the agreement.

Due to the lack of advanced technology in developing countries, farm trade is the most doable method of survival, but high tariffs on exports to “wealthy” countries such as the United States, create almost insurmountable barriers.

Does it make sense to send billions of dollars of foreign aid to developing countries, but then be a part of an agenda to tacitly endorse trade barriers for some or many of the very products that foreign aid went to create/generate, or is supposed to be going for?

Many developing or third world countries have endured the ravages of conflicts and wars for decades. Those ravages are the primary cause of the direct level of poverty, gone unnoticed by the politicians and propped-up, so-called military brass living luxurious lifestyles, complements of foreign aid from the United States.

Are wars worth the loss of lives? Sadly, the answer to that may be that it depends on which side of the negotiating table you were on and your agenda.

As a life-long supporter of the fighting military personnel, with family members and husband having served proudly, this writer still whole-heartedly supports that level of the military. The politicians and military brass “driving the war,” not so much!

The reader's comments or questions are always welcome. E-mail me at doris@dorisbeaver.com.