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<p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><strong>Destroying What
Remains</strong></span> <br>
<span style="font-size: medium;"><strong>How the U.S. Navy Plans
to War Game the Arctic</strong> </span><br>
By <a target="_blank"
href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/authors/dahrjamail/">Dahr
Jamail</a><br>
<b><small><small><small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176001/tomgram%3A_dahr_jamail%2C_the_navy%27s_great_alaskan_%22war%22/#more">http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176001/tomgram%3A_dahr_jamail%2C_the_navy%27s_great_alaskan_%22war%22/#more</a></small></small></small></small></b><br>
</p>
<p>[<em>This essay is a joint </em><a target="_blank"
href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/">TomDispatch</a><em>/</em><a
target="_blank" href="http://www.truth-out.org/">Truthout</a><em> report.</em>]<strong> </strong></p>
<p>I lived in Anchorage for 10 years and spent much of that time
climbing in and on the spine of the state, the Alaska Range.
Three times I stood atop the mountain the Athabaskans call
Denali, "the great one." During that decade, I mountaineered for
more than half a year on that magnificent state’s highest
peaks. It was there that I took in my own insignificance while
living amid rock and ice, sleeping atop glaciers that creaked
and moaned as they slowly ground their way toward lower
elevations.</p>
<p>Alaska contains the <a target="_blank"
href="http://www.nps.gov/glba/learn/nature/geology.htm">largest
coastal mountain range</a> in the world and the highest peak
in North America. It has more coastline than the entire
contiguous 48 states combined and is big enough to hold the
state of Texas two and a half times over. It has the largest
population of bald eagles in the country. It has 430 kinds of
birds along with the brown bear, the largest carnivorous land
mammal in the world, and other species ranging from the pygmy
shrew that weighs less than a penny to gray whales that come in
at 45 tons. Species that are classified as "endangered" in other
places are often found in abundance in Alaska.</p>
<p>Now, a dozen years after I left my home state and landed in
Baghdad to begin life as a journalist and nine years after
definitively abandoning Alaska, I find myself back. I wish it
was to climb another mountain, but this time, unfortunately,
it’s because I seem increasingly incapable of escaping the long
and destructive reach of the U.S. military.</p>
</blockquote>
<a name="more"></a>
<p>That summer in 2003 when my life in Alaska ended was an unnerving
one for me. It followed a winter and spring in which I found
myself protesting the coming invasion of Iraq in the streets of
Anchorage, then impotently watching the televised spectacle of the
Bush administration’s "shock and awe" assault on that country as
Baghdad burned and Iraqis were slaughtered. While on Denali that
summer I listened to news of the beginnings of what would be an
occupation from hell and, in my tent on a glacier at 17,000
thousand feet, wondered what in the world I could do.</p>
<p>In this way, in a cloud of angst, I traveled to Iraq as an
independent news team of one and found myself reporting on
atrocities that were evident to anyone not embedded with the U.S.
military, which was then laying waste to the country. My early
reporting, some of it for <a target="_blank"
href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/2109/dahr_jamail_on_devastated_iraq"><em>TomDispatch</em></a>,
warned of <a target="_blank"
href="http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/30164-report-shows-us-invasion-occupation-of-iraq-left-1-million-dead">body
counts</a> on a trajectory toward one million, rampant torture
in the military’s detention facilities, and the toxic legacy it
had left in the city of Fallujah thanks to the use of depleted
uranium munitions and <a target="_blank"
href="http://www.ipsnews.net/2004/11/iraq-unusual-weapons-used-in-fallujah/">white
phosphorous</a>.</p>
<p>As I learned, the U.S. military is an industrial-scale killing
machine and also the single largest <a target="_blank"
href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174810/">consumer of
fossil fuels</a> on the planet, which makes it a major source of
the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. As it happens, distant lands
like Iraq sitting atop vast reservoirs of oil and natural gas are
by no means its only playing fields.</p>
<p>Take the place where I now live, the Olympic Peninsula in
Washington state. The U.S. Navy already has plans to conduct <a
target="_blank"
href="http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/28009-documents-show-navy-s-electromagnetic-warfare-training-would-harm-humans-and-wildlife">electromagnetic
warfare training</a> in an area close to where I moved to once
again seek solace in the mountains: Olympic National Forest and
nearby Olympic National Park. And this June, it's scheduling
massive war games in the Gulf of Alaska, including live bombing
runs that will mean the detonation of tens of thousands of pounds
of toxic munitions, as well as the use of active sonar in the most
pristine, economically valuable, and sustainable salmon fishery in
the country (arguably in the world). And all of this is to happen
right in the middle of fishing season. </p>
<p>This time, in other words, the bombs will be falling far closer
to home. Whether it's war-torn Iraq or "peaceful" Alaska, Sunnis
and Shi'ites or salmon and whales, to me the omnipresent
“footprint” of the U.S. military feels inescapable.</p>
<p><strong>The War Comes Home</strong></p>
<p>In 2013, U.S. Navy researchers <a target="_blank"
href="http://www.systemiccapital.com/navy-researchers-predict-summer-arctic-ice-to-disappear-by-2016-84-years-ahead-of-schedule/">predicted</a> ice-free
summer Arctic waters by 2016 and it looks as if that prediction
might come true. Recently, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA) <a target="_blank"
href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/may/05/arctic-ice-retreat-scientists-climate-change">reported</a> that
there was less ice in the Arctic this winter than in any other
winter of the satellite era. Given that the Navy has been making
plans for "ice-free" operations in the Arctic since <a
target="_blank" href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174949">at
least 2001</a>, their June "Northern Edge" exercises may well
prove to be just the opening salvo in the future northern climate
wars, with whales, seals, and salmon being the first in the line
of fire.</p>
<p>In April 2001, a Navy symposium entitled "Naval Operations in an
Ice-Free Arctic" was mounted to begin to prepare the service for a
climate-change-induced future. Fast forward to June 2015. In what
the military refers to as Alaska's "premier" joint training
exercise, Alaskan Command aims to conduct “Northern Edge” over
8,429 nautical miles, which include critical habitat for all five
wild Alaskan salmon species and 377 other species of marine life.
The upcoming war games in the Gulf of Alaska will not be the first
such exercises in the region -- they have been conducted, on and
off, for the last 30 years -- but they will be the largest by far.
In fact, a 360% rise in munitions use is expected, according to
Emily Stolarcyk, the program manager for the Eyak Preservation
Council (EPC).</p>
<p>The waters in the Gulf of Alaska are some of the most pristine in
the world, rivaled only by those in the Antarctic, and among the
purest and most nutrient-rich waters anywhere. Northern Edge will
take place in an Alaskan “marine protected area,” as well as in a
NOAA-designated “fisheries protected area.” These war games will
also coincide with the key breeding and migratory periods of the
marine life in the region as they make their way toward Prince
William Sound, as well as further north into the Arctic.</p>
<p>Species affected will include blue, fin, gray, humpback, minke,
sei, sperm, and killer whales, the highly endangered North Pacific
right whale (of which there are only approximately 30 left), as
well as dolphins and sea lions. No fewer than a dozen native
tribes including the Eskimo, Eyak, Athabascan, Tlingit, Sun'aq,
and Aleut rely on the area for subsistence living, not to speak of
their cultural and spiritual identities.</p>
<p>The Navy is already permitted to use live ordnance including
bombs, missiles, and torpedoes, along with active and passive
sonar in "realistic" war gaming that is expected to involve the
release of as much as 352,000 pounds of "expended materials" every
year. (The Navy’s EIS <a target="_blank"
href="http://goaeis.com/Portals/GOAEIS/files/EIS/GOA_FEIS_3_2_Expended_Materials.pdf">lists</a>
numerous things as “expended materials,” including missiles,
bombs, torpedoes.) At present, the Navy is well into the process
of securing the necessary permits for the next five years and has
even mentioned making plans for the next 20. Large numbers of
warships and submarines are slated to move into the area and the
potential pollution from this has worried Alaskans who live
nearby.</p>
<p>"We are concerned about expended materials in addition to the
bombs, jet noise, and sonar," the Eyak Preservation Council's
Emily Stolarcyk tells me as we sit in her office in Cordova,
Alaska. EPC is an environmental and social-justice-oriented
nonprofit whose primary mission is to protect wild salmon habitat.
"Chromium, lead, tungsten, nickel, cadmium, cyanide, ammonium
perchlorate, the Navy's own <a target="_blank"
href="http://www.goaeis.com">environmental impact statement</a> says
there is a high risk of chemical exposure to fish."</p>
<p>Tiny Cordova, population 2,300, is home to the largest commercial
fishing fleet in the state and consistently ranks among the top 10
busiest U.S. fishing ports. Since September, when Stolarcyk first
became aware of the Navy's plans, she has been working tirelessly,
calling local, state and federal officials and alerting virtually
every fisherman she runs into about what she calls “the storm”
looming on the horizon. "The propellants from the Navy's missiles
and some of their other weapons will release benzene, toluene,
xylene, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and naphthalene into the
waters of twenty percent of the training area, according to their
own EIS [environmental impact statement]," she explains as we look
down on Cordova’s harbor with salmon fishing season rapidly
approaching. As it happens, most of the chemicals she mentioned
were part of BP’s disastrous 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico,
which I <a target="_blank"
href="http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/23147-bp-four-years-on-no-restoration-in-sight">covered</a> for
years, so as I listened to her I had an eerie sense of futuristic <em>déjà
vu</em>.</p>
<p>Here’s just one example of the kinds of damage that will occur:
the cyanide discharge from a Navy torpedo is in the range of
140-150 parts per billion. The Environmental Protection Agency’s
"allowable" limit on cyanide: one part per billion.</p>
<p>The Navy's EIS estimates that, in the five-year period in which
these war games are to be conducted, there will be more than
182,000 "takes" -- direct deaths of a marine mammal, or the
disruption of essential behaviors like breeding, nursing, or
surfacing. On the deaths of fish, it offers no estimates at all.
Nevertheless, the Navy will be permitted to use at least 352,000
pounds of expended materials in these games annually. The
potential negative effects could be far-reaching, given species
migration and the global current system in northern waters.</p>
<p>In the meantime, the Navy is giving Stolarcyk’s efforts the cold
shoulder, showing what she calls “total disregard toward the
people making their living from these waters." She adds, “They say
this is for national security. They are theoretically defending
us, but if they destroy our food source and how we make our
living, while polluting our air and water, what's left to defend?"</p>
<p>Stolarcyk has been labeled an "activist" and "environmentalist,"
perhaps because the main organizations she’s managed to sign on to
her efforts are indeed environmental groups like the <a
target="_blank" href="http://www.akmarine.org/">Alaska Marine
Conservation Council</a>, the <a target="_blank"
href="http://akcenter.org/">Alaska Center for the Environment</a>,
and the <a target="_blank" href="http://alaskansfirst.org/">Alaskans
First Coalition</a>.</p>
<p>"Why does wanting to protect wild salmon habitat make me an
activist?" she asks. "How has that caused me to be branded as an
environmentalist?" Given that the Alaska commercial fishing
industry could be decimated if its iconic “wild-caught” salmon
turn up with traces of cyanide or any of the myriad chemicals the
Navy will be using, Stolarcyk could as easily be seen as fighting
for the well-being, if not the survival, of the fishing industry
in her state.</p>
<p><strong>War Gaming the Community</strong></p>
<p>The clock is ticking in Cordova and others in Stolarcyk’s
community are beginning to share her concerns. A few like Alexis
Cooper, the executive director of <a target="_blank"
href="https://www.cdfu.org/">Cordova District Fishermen United</a> (CDFU),
a non-profit organization that represents the commercial fishermen
in the area, have begun to speak out. "We're already seeing
reduced numbers of halibut without the Navy having expanded their
operations in the GOA [Gulf of Alaska]," she says, "and we’re
already seeing other decreases in harvestable species."</p>
<p>CDFU represents more than 800 commercial salmon fishermen, an
industry that accounts for an estimated 90% of Cordova’s economy.
Without salmon, like many other towns along coastal southeastern
Alaska, it would effectively cease to exist. </p>
<p>Teal Webber, a lifelong commercial fisherwoman and member of the
Native Village of Eyak, gets visibly upset when the Navy's plans
come up. "You wouldn't bomb a bunch of farmland," she says, "and
the salmon run comes right through this area, so why are they
doing this now?" She adds, "When all of the fishing community in
Cordova gets the news about how much impact the Navy's war games
could have, you'll see them oppose it <em>en masse</em>."</p>
<p>While I’m in town, Stolarcyk offers a public presentation of the
case against Northern Edge in the elementary school auditorium.
As she shows a slide from the Navy's environmental impact
statement indicating that the areas affected will take decades to
recover, several fishermen quietly shake their heads.</p>
<p>One of them, James Weiss, who also works for Alaska's Fish and
Game Department, pulls me aside and quietly says, "My son is
growing up here, eating everything that comes out of the sea. I
know fish travel through that area they plan to bomb and pollute,
so of course I'm concerned. This is too important of a fishing
area to put at risk."</p>
<p>In the question-and-answer session that follows, Jim Kasch, the
town’s mayor, assures Stolarcyk that he'll ask the city council to
become involved. "What's disturbing is that there is no thought
about the fish and marine life," he tells me later. "It's a
sensitive area and we live off the ocean. This is just scary." A
Marine veteran, Kasch acknowledges the Navy's need to train, then
pauses and adds, "But dropping live ordnance in a sensitive
fishery just isn't a good idea. The entire coast of Alaska lives
and breathes from our resources from the ocean."</p>
<p>That evening, with the sun still high in the spring sky, I walk
along the boat docks in the harbor and can’t help but wonder
whether this small, scruffy town has a hope in hell of stopping or
altering Northern Edge. There have been examples of such unlikely
victories in the past. A dozen years ago, the Navy was, for
example, finally <a target="_blank"
href="http://www.democracynow.org/2013/5/2/punishing_vieques_puerto_rico_struggles_with">forced
to stop using</a> the Puerto Rican island of Vieques as its own
private bombing and test range, but only after having done so
since the 1940s. In the wake of those six decades of target
practice, the island’s population has the highest cancer and
asthma rates in the Caribbean, a phenomenon locals attribute to
the Navy's activities.</p>
<p>Similarly, earlier this year a <a target="_blank"
href="http://www.nrdc.org/media/2015/150331a.asp?utm_source=tw&utm_medium=tweet&utm_campaign=socialmedia">federal
court ruled</a> that Navy war games off the coast of California
violated the law. It deemed an estimated 9.6 million "harms" to
whales and dolphins via high-intensity sonar and underwater
detonations improperly assessed as "negligible" in that service’s
EIS.</p>
<p>As a result of Stolarcyk's work, on May 6th Cordova’s city
council <a target="_blank"
href="http://www.cordovaradio.com/council.pdf">passed a
resolution</a> formally opposing the upcoming war games.
Unfortunately, the largest seafood processor in Cordova (and
Alaska), <a target="_blank" href="http://www.tridentseafoods.com/">Trident
Seafoods</a>, has yet to offer a comment on Northern Edge. Its
representatives wouldn’t even return my phone call on the
subject. Nor, for instance, has Cordova’s <a target="_blank"
href="http://pwssc.org/">Prince William Sound Science Center</a>,
whose president, Katrina Hoffman, wrote me that “as an
organization, we have no position statement on the matter at this
time." This, despite their stated aim of supporting "the ability
of communities in this region to maintain socioeconomic resilience
among healthy, functioning ecosystems.” (Of course, it should be
noted that at least some of their funds come from the <a
target="_blank"
href="http://pwssc.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/PWS_2013-Annual-Report.pdf">Navy</a>.) </p>
<p><strong>Government-to-Government Consultation</strong></p>
<p>At Kodiak Island, my next stop, I find a stronger sense of the
threat on the horizon in both the fishing and tribal communities
and palpable anger about the Navy's plans. Take J.J. Marsh, the
CEO of the Sun'aq Tribe, the largest on the island. "I think it's
horrible," she says the minute I sit down in her office. “I grew
up here. I was raised on subsistence living. I grew up caring
about the environment and the animals and fishing in a native
household living off the land and seeing my grandpa being a
fisherman. So obviously, the need to protect this is clear."</p>
<p>What, I ask, is her tribe going to do?</p>
<p>She responds instantly. "We are going to file for a
government-to-government consultation and so are other Kodiak
tribes so that hopefully we can get this stopped.”</p>
<p>The U.S. government has a unique relationship with Alaska’s
Native tribes, like all other American Indian tribes. It treats
each as if it were an <a target="_blank"
href="http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/program_offices/public_indian_housing/ih/regs/govtogov_tcp">autonomous
government</a>. If a tribe requests a “consultation,”
Washington must respond and Marsh hopes that such an intervention
might help block Northern Edge. "It's about the generations to
come. We have an opportunity as a sovereign tribe to go to battle
on this with the feds. If we aren't going to do it, who is?"</p>
<p>Melissa Borton, the tribal administrator for the Native Village
of Afognak, feels similarly. Like Marsh’s tribe, hers was, until
recently, remarkably unaware of the Navy's plans. That’s hardly
surprising since that service has essentially made <a
target="_blank"
href="http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/29524-domestic-military-expansion-spreads-through-the-us-ignites-dissent">no
effort</a> to publicize what it is going to do. "We are
absolutely going to be part of this [attempt to stop the Navy],"
she tells me. "I'm appalled."</p>
<p>One reason she’s appalled: she lived through Alaska’s monster <a
target="_blank"
href="http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/06/alaskas_present_after_1989_exxon_valdez_oil_spill_might_be_gulf_coast_future.html">Exxon
Valdez oil spill</a> of 1989. “We are still feeling its
effects,” she says. “Every time they make these environmental
decisions they affect us... We are already plagued with cancer and
it comes from the military waste already in our ground or that our
fish and deer eat and we eat those... I've lost family to cancer,
as most around here have and at some point in time this has to
stop."</p>
<p>When I meet with Natasha Hayden, an Afognak tribal council member
whose husband is a commercial fisherman, she puts the matter
simply and bluntly. “This is a frontal attack by the Navy on our
cultural identity."</p>
<p>Gary Knagin, lifelong fisherman and member of the Sun'aq tribe,
is busily preparing his boat and crew for the salmon season when
we talk. “We aren't going to be able to eat if they do this. It's
bullshit. It'll be detrimental to us and it's obvious why. In
June, when we are out there, salmon are jumping [in the waters]
where they want to bomb as far as you can see in any direction.
That's the salmon run. So why do they have to do it in June? If
our fish are contaminated, the whole state's economy is hit. The
fishing industry here supports everyone and every other business
here is reliant upon the fishing industry. So if you take out the
fishing, you take out the town."</p>
<p><strong>The Navy’s Free Ride</strong></p>
<p>I requested comment from the U.S. military's Alaskan Command
office, and Captain Anastasia Wasem responded after I returned
home from my trip north. In our email exchange, I asked her why
the Navy had chosen the Gulf of Alaska, given that it was a
critical habitat for all five of the state’s wild salmon. She
replied that the waters where the war games will occur, which the
Navy refers to as the Temporary Maritime Activities Area, are
"strategically significant" and claimed that a recent "Pacific
command study" found that naval training opportunities are
declining everywhere in the Pacific "except Alaska," which she
referred to as "a true national asset."</p>
<p>"The Navy's training activities,” she added, “are conducted with
an extensive set of mitigation measures designed to minimize the
potential risk to marine life."</p>
<p>In its assessment of the Navy’s plans, however, the National
Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), one of the premier federal
agencies tasked with protecting national fisheries, disagreed.
"Potential stressors to managed species and EFH [essential fish
habitat],” its <a target="_blank"
href="http://goaeis.com/Portals/GOAEIS/files/DraftSEIS/Appendix_C_Public_Participation.pdf">report</a> said,
“include vessel movements (disturbance and collisions), aircraft
overflights (disturbance), fuel spills, ship discharge, explosive
ordnance, sonar training (disturbance), weapons
firing/nonexplosive ordnance use (disturbance and strikes), and
expended materials (ordnance-related materials, targets,
sonobuoys, and marine markers). Navy activities could have direct
and indirect impacts on individual species, modify their habitat,
or alter water quality." According to the NMFS, effects on
habitats and communities from Northern Edge “may result in damage
that could take years to decades from which to recover.”</p>
<p>Captain Wasem assured me that the Navy made its plans in
consultation with the NMFS, but she failed to add that those
consultations were found to be inadequate by the agency or to
acknowledge that it expressed serious concerns about the coming
war games. In fact, in 2011 it made four conservation
recommendations to avoid, mitigate, or otherwise offset possible
adverse effects to essential fish habitat. Although such
recommendations were non-binding, the Navy was supposed to
consider the public interest in its planning.</p>
<p>One of the recommendations, for instance, was that it develop a
plan to report on fish mortality during the exercises. The Navy
rejected this, <a target="_blank"
href="http://goaeis.com/Portals/GOAEIS/files/RegulatoryConsultation/04_NOAA_NMFS-MSFCMA.pdf">claiming</a> that
such reporting would "not provide much, if any, valuable data."
As Stolarcyk told me, “The Navy declined to do three of their four
recommendations, and NMFS just rolled over."</p>
<p>I asked Captain Wasem why the Navy choose to hold the exercise in
the middle of salmon fishing season.</p>
<p>"The Northern Edge exercise is scheduled when weather is most
conducive for training," she explained vaguely, pointing out that
"the Northern Edge exercise is a big investment for DoD [the
Department of Defense] in terms of funding, use of
equipment/fuels, strategic transportation, and personnel."</p>
<p><strong>Arctic Nightmares</strong></p>
<p>The bottom line on all this is simple, if brutal. The Navy is
increasingly focused on possible future climate-change conflicts
in the melting waters of the north and, in that context, has
little or no intention of caretaking the environment when it comes
to military exercises. In addition, the federal agencies tasked
with overseeing any war-gaming plans have neither the legal
ability nor the will to enforce environmental regulations when
what’s at stake, at least according to the Pentagon, is “national
security.”</p>
<p>Needless to say, when it comes to the safety of locals in the
Navy’s expanding area of operation, there is no obvious recourse.
Alaskans can’t turn to NMFS or the Environmental Protection Agency
or NOAA. If you want to stop the U.S. military from dropping live
munitions, or blasting electromagnetic radiation into national
forests and marine sanctuaries, or poisoning your environment,
you'd better figure out how to file a major lawsuit or, if you
belong to a Native tribe, demand a government-to-government
consultation and hope it works. And both of those are long shots,
at best.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, as the race heats up for reserves of oil and gas in
the melting Arctic that shouldn't be extracted and burned in the
first place, so do the Navy's war games. From southern California
to Alaska, if you live in a coastal town or city, odds are that
the Navy is coming your way, if it's not already there.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, Emily Stolarcyk shows no signs of throwing in the
towel, despite the way the deck is stacked against her efforts.
"It's supposedly our constitutional right that control of the
military is in the hands of the citizens," she told me in our last
session together. At one point, she paused and asked, "Haven’t we
learned from our past mistakes around not protecting salmon? Look
at California, Oregon, and Washington's salmon. They’ve been
decimated. We have the best and most pristine salmon left on the
planet, and the Navy wants to do these exercises. You can't have
both."</p>
<p>Stolarcyk and I share a bond common among people who have lived
in our northernmost state, a place whose wilderness is so vast and
beautiful as to make your head spin. Those of us who have
experienced its rivers and mountains, have been awed by the
northern lights, and are regularly reminded of our own
insignificance (even as we gained a new appreciation for how
precious life really is) tend to want to protect the place as well
as share it with others.</p>
<p>"Everyone has been telling me from the start that I'm fighting a
lost cause and I will not win," Stolarcyk said as our time
together wound down. "No other non-profit in Alaska will touch
this. But I actually believe we can fight this and we can stop
them. I believe in the power of one. If I can convince someone to
join me, it spreads from there. It takes a spark to start a fire,
and I refuse to believe that nothing can be done."</p>
<p>Three decades ago, in his book <em>Arctic Dreams</em>, Barry
Lopez suggested that, when it came to exploiting the Arctic versus
living sustainably in it, the ecosystems of the region were too
vulnerable to absorb attempts to "accommodate both sides." In the
years since, whether it’s been the Navy, Big Energy, or the
increasingly catastrophic impacts of human-caused climate
disruption, only one side has been accommodated and the results
have been dismal. </p>
<p>In Iraq in wartime, I saw what the U.S. military was capable of
in a distant ravaged land. In June, I’ll see what that military is
capable of in what still passes for peacetime and close to home
indeed. As I sit at my desk writing this story on Washington's
Olympic Peninsula, the roar of Navy jets periodically rumbles in
from across Puget Sound where a massive naval air station is
located. I can’t help but wonder whether, years from now, I’ll
still be writing pieces with titles like "Destroying What
Remains," as the Navy continues its war-gaming in an ice-free
summer Arctic amid a sea of off-shore oil drilling platforms. </p>
<p><em>Dahr Jamail, a </em><a target="_blank"
href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175869/tomgram%3A_dahr_jamail,_incinerating_iraq/">TomDispatch<em> regular</em></a><em>,
spent, all told, more than a year as an unembedded journalist in
Iraq between 2003 and 2014. He is a recipient of numerous
honors, including the Martha Gellhorn Award for Journalism and
the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism for his
work in Iraq. He is the author of two books: </em><a
target="_blank"
href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/1931859612/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20">Beyond
the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in
Occupied Iraq</a><em> and </em><a target="_blank"
href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/1608460959/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20">The
Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and
Afghanistan</a><em>. He is a staff reporter for </em>Truthout<em>.
This is a joint</em> <a target="_blank"
href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/">TomDispatch</a>/<a
target="_blank" href="http://www.truth-out.org/">Truthout</a><em> report.
<br>
</em></p>
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