The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported yesterday that Air National Guard Iraq War veteran Amie Muller died last week of pancreatic cancer. She was twice deployed at Balad Iraq, embedded with a Military Intelligence squadron. Her living quarters were close to the 10 acre base burn pit, a burn pit that was so active, it combusted perhaps as much as 100 tons of all manner of waste a day. The US military operated approximately 230 burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan until 2009, when their use was restricted. Upon returning home, Ms. Mueller began to suffer a series of illnesses generally only found in much older women. Believing at least some of her illnesses were related to the toxic brew of gases and particulates released by Balad’s burn pit, she did what she could, despite being very sick, to bring awareness of the potential heath risks associated with burn pits. The Star Tribune article is short and you can find it here. Ms. Muller’s obituary can be read here. She was 36 year old.
I have a master’s degree in chemistry. During the (brief) time I was doing research, I can remember scrutinizing the labels of chemical reagents before use to be sure of limiting exposure. One of my fellow graduate students moved his entire Schlenk line into a fume hood when our boss (a great boss by the way) gave him a project working with phosphine. The thought of living near an open burn pit, in which just about anything you can imagine was burned, over the course of two deployments gives me a severe case of the professional willies. The thought that my tax dollars were used to construct bases which exposed servicemen and women and civilians as well to a continuous flow of airborne toxins makes me feel angry.
There has been a congressional response. On May 15, 2015 Representative Etsy (D-CT) introduced HR 2237, the Helping Veterans Exposed to Burn Pits Act. It has been referred to the House Sub-Committee on Military Personnel with no action reported at congress.gov since August 13, 2015. On March 15 2016 Senator Klobachar (D-MN) introduced S 2679, a bill with the same title to the Senate where it has been referred to the committee on Veterans’ Affairs. Hearings were held on May 24, 2016. No legislation has been passed although recent new reports describe a bipartisan effort by Senators Senators Tillis (R-NC) and Klobachar (D-MN) on February 8, 2017.
If you feel like you have read about the sort of thing before, its because you have. Congress will eventually pass a bill which authorizes further study. There will be findings. There may be lawsuits. Eventually, probably, our government will do the right thing. It will be too late for many. That was the pattern for Agent Orange. That was the pattern for asbestos and mesothelioma in the military. That was the pattern for the downwinders, which primarily affected civilians.
I am against war on moral grounds but not everyone is. And so, when I engage with someone who disagrees with my view on war, I rarely talk about my moral objections to war. Instead, I talk about money. The argument is simple. If you want war, you want taxes. Our society has and will continue to pay for the health effects, physical and psychological, that war has on our military personnel and civilians. That will cost money. Lots and lots of money. And that money will come from you and me. If our brothers and sisters on the right would like lower tax burdens, one easy way to get them would be to close out our military involvement in our current wars, and then be very cautious about participating in new conflicts…
Need a fun fact? Ask your favorite political hawk what year the federal government, (which means taxpayers — you and me), stopped paying on the civil war. I don’t mean the social costs of the war, the social costs of Jim Crow or the social costs of the civil rights movement. I mean the actual dollars & cents cost of the war. The answer: The federal government was still paying in 2014.
If my brothers and sisters on the right want war, if they think war is necessary, if they believe war is a useful tool of diplomacy then they must love raising taxes because war, in so many ways, isn’t free.