Now and then, police officers, charged with upholding and enforcing the law, stray out of bounds in their treatment of suspects or even innocent civilians. Police brutality may occur without being reported, but, in other cases, the lawbreaking lawmen are themselves brought to justice. It’s an imperfect system, but at least the goal is to have a decent police force.
Not so at higher levels of our government. Sworn to uphold our Constitution, the Bush-Cheney administration is the ultimate law-breaker, unfortunately aided and abetted by an often corrupt and craven Congress. It’s a sad thing to see freedoms trashed, elections stolen, the Bill of Rights ignored, pre-emptive war based on shameful lies, and basic resources like air, water, land and wildlife permanently sacrificed to endless, mindless greed.
Our country is being eviscerated. Extra-legal exemptions granted to industry are turning our biosphere into a toxic sink. Air is less fit to breathe. Aquifers are depleted and water pollution sanctioned. Land, crops, and food are continually saturated with carcinogens.
Perhaps the most egregious example is the encouragement given the armed forces to take over and destroy anything in their path. Whatever the military proposes is almost automatically granted a blank check, not only by the administration but also by members of Congress, who supinely cringe in terror that they might be labeled unpatriotic or unconcerned about national security. So it’s now OK to violate the Marine Mammal Protection Act and blow out the eardrums of whales and dolphins with Navy sonar, and it’s OK to contaminate clean aquifers with rocket fuel, and it’s OK to ignore and violate the Endangered Species Act, and it’s OK to revive the nuclear arms race, to mention just a few such items.
Nationally, the American military already controls 25 million acres, but that hasn’t slowed down further land grabs. In southeastern Colorado, the Army controls the 250,000-acre Pinyon Canyon area at Fort Carson near Colorado Springs. That’s a huge piece of land, but the Army wants to add another 418,000 acres and use it as a training ground for up to 10,000 additional soldiers, bringing the total number of soldiers at Fort Carson to about 26,000. The existing Pinyon Canyon area, much of it seized by eminent domain, is 368 square miles, and the expansion area alone is 654 square miles, about two thirds the size of the state of Delaware.
As many as 80 ranches would be gobbled up by the expansion, and local ranchers have organized to oppose the land grab. But the Defense Department can take its land by eminent domain, and shows no signs of backing down.
Nor is that the whole story: A map showing a proposal to increase the ultimate size of the expansion to 2.5 million acres was leaked last year. The Army dismisses that as “old,” but, in violation of the Freedom of Information Act, has refused to make its records on the subject public.
The expansion would also intrude on existing National Grasslands, indicating that even land supposedly preserved as a public trust for the benefit of the American people can be taken over by the military at will.
By the way, cleanup of existing unexploded ordnance on U.S. military ranges, called “UXO” in military jargon, is variously estimated to cost at least $52 billion up to $83 billion. Are you feeling safer yet?
Here’s the last word, from military spokesman Brad Smith: “No way and in no manner can we degrade the performance of (our) weapon systems or a platform for environmental reasons.”
Connie Harvey’s e-mail address is cmharve@gmail.com.