By Ned Farquhar
Of the Journal
A friend who works for the Forest Service, building and repairing trails, tells me the trails program is being sharply cut. Another friend in the Forest Service says there's almost zero enforcement against people using all-terrain vehicles and grazing unauthorized cattle.
Where's the money for basic maintenance and security on the public lands?
At first it seems unconnected that on the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war, almost 4,000 American soldiers have died and another 30,000 have been seriously wounded or injured. Two million Iraqis have fled their country while another 2 million have been "internally displaced." Perhaps more than 100,000 Iraqis have been killed in civil violence. Further, the Iraq war has turned into a money pit, a black hole for trillions of U.S. taxpayer dollars, consuming money needed for basic spending on longstanding programs.
The elimination of trails programs in some of the western national forests might seem to be a small sacrifice to pay for national security (whether or not you agree that the Iraq war represents protection of national security). The greatest sacrifice, it need not be said, is in the communities and households that have lost someone to cemeteries or hospitals. Americans grieve for the loss of these Americans of all ages and from all geographies and walks of life.
Yet defining sacrifice so narrowly would be a mistake.
The federal government is hemorrhaging money to pay for this war. The self-professed budget-balancing taxcutting true believers who took over the government seven years ago have turned out to be false prophets. The national debt is growing so rapidly and so large that parents should be ashamed to look their children in the eye. There is and was no Iraq connection to 9/11. There is and was no nuclear threat. There was no reason to pull out the inspectors and invade so precipitously. And we are all paying and paying for the bravado and mistakes of our leadership.
Leaders are often self-assured but weak. The Eliot Spitzer escapade in New York was titillating, entertaining, and for observers who look scornfully and skeptically at elected officials it was a homecoming event. All the same, it pales in comparison with the larger, less salacious mistakes and recklessness that created this disastrous situation in Iraq.
The replays of the vice president from five years ago on "Meet the Press"— when he predicted that the invasion of Iraq would be a liberation, not an occupation, saying that there was little or no chance of an extended occupation, and that Iraqis would embrace and revel in their new freedom— constitute a raw example of the bad judgment and self-certainty of the true mistake-makers in modern politics.
Feeling the impacts of record-high oil prices and knowing that Iraq sits over the world's third-largest oilfields, many Americans are angry and bitter that we have sacrificed so much for people who are unable to come to even a basic understanding regarding their future together.
Americans have a right to question the administration's judgment on Iraq. That same questionable judgment extends to the administration's energy policies, based on more oil and little investment in efficiency and alternatives. The vice president's national energy policy, developed in 2001, was an addict's dream. We are now paying $400 billion a year for foreign oil, and likely another $100 billion a year to protect oil around the world.
The repercussions aren't confined to world oil markets. They affect every American who uses transportation, eats food or uses the national forests.
President Bush and Vice President Cheney present themselves as westerners. Meanwhile they unleashed a direct assault on western lands, making their highest priority oil and gas development that can barely dent our addiction. They cut funding for basic commitments to public land management. They shorted energy efficiency and alternatives that could help reduce the addiction.
Yes, the Iraq war is connected to all these issues. It's the ruthless dictator in oil country we chose as the target for our full military might, and it's the oil-rich countries that we have chosen (twice now) to liberate with our biggest commitments of military force since Vietnam. The connection extends all the way from our wasting national treasury and weakening the dollar to maintenance of those trails in the national forests. The past five years, unfortunately, have been full of the wrong kinds of sacrifice.
Ned Farquhar is an energy and climate advocate for the Natural Resources Defense Council. The views expressed are his own. E-mail to: inthewest@comcast.net
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