File this one under Krap We Already Know But Maybe Others Don't. Well, they may know already, but the blaring roll-call of red herrings has gotten in the way of their full comprehension. The American occupation of Iraq has seen more than its fair share of party lines and modii operandi. (Is that a real phrase?) Anyway, in yet another legitimization of Alfonso Cuaron's prescient Children of Men and dystopianists and doubters everywhere, a group of retired generals and admirals recently released a report called National Security and the Threat of Climate Change which asserts that WMD, democracy and all the other lame reasons we drop billions into dumber wars have at their root a massive, multiplayer conflict over, what else, natural resources. Or, in the case of this specific report, surviving their lack.
The reason I tied the report together with the occupation of Iraq may ring hollow to the formalists who would like to critique Cuaron's "anti-Blade Runner" (as he calls his film in one of its DVD's rewarding featurettes) apart from the War-on-Terrorized world in which it was created. But when retired general Anthony Zinni is one of the military authorities on the new report asserting that climate change represents one of the greatest threats to global political and environmental stability, well good luck dodging that bullet, suckers! For those of you who might not remember or care, Zinni first endorsed Bush in 2000 and even tossed this nugget before Congress the same year:
"Iraq remains the most significant near-term threat to U.S. interests in the Persian Gulf region. This is primarily due to its large conventional military force, pursuit of WMD, oppressive treatment of Iraqi citizens...Even if Baghdad reversed its course and surrendered all WMD capabilities, it retains the scientific, technical, and industrial infrastructure to replace agents and munitions within weeks or months."
Sure, dude. Whatever you say. Of course, the former Commander in Chief of U.S. Central Command turned heel on the administration shortly after his theoretical assessments of Iraq exponentially disintegrated the more they were put into real-time practice -- and he woke up and smelled who he was working for. He has since come to his senses (surprise!), famously bashed Bush and his neocon strategists, and come out of the environmental closet, so to speak. Now, the former special envoy for the United States to Israel and the Palestinian Authority had this to say to NPR about the geopolitical clusterfuck we find ourselves mired in:
"Even a small change of 2 to 3 degrees in one direction could be the difference between a management problem [and] a catastrophe...If the environment change exacerbates those to a greater extent, it sort of feeds into the extremists and their ability to recruit supporters."
In other words, resource wars are killing us all. Same as it ever was. Climate change has already heinously inflamed instabilities in Israel, Darfur, Iraq and beyond, and now it is coming home to roost everywhere, as Cuaron's film illustrated all too well. Next up: Mass migration, criminalized immigration, water wars, land and resource loss, natural catastrophe and...well, you know the rest.
Want more proof? The corporation that bankrolled the study is none other than CNA Financial, which is mostly owned by Loews, whose biz holdings run the gamut from offshore oil and gas drilling to cigarettes, hotels and Bulova watches. In other words, they know better than anyone that time is up.
