Walking around outside during Earth Day, I couldn’t help but notice that the entire program was not so much about environmentalism as it was about anti-war protests and blatant, politically-biased chants.
As an Officer Candidate in the United States Marine Corps. PLC, I take no issue with people being anti-war—indeed I would be greatly disheartened if American citizens were ever gunning to go overseas and kill other people—however what I do take issue with is the intentional misrepresentation of the mission in Iraq, of the troops involved and the all too often hypocritical finger pointing.
For starters, I couldn’t help but notice the signs everywhere that read, “No More War for Oil!” While this has become somewhat of a rallying cry for groups like Code Pink, it represents a gross ignorance of the actual mission in Iraq. I’m going to say something that may shock many of you: This war is not about oil. Many of you will no doubt instantly fall to the argument of “record profits” from the oil industry without realizing the mistake so many make—there are only two oil companies which have made any significant profit since the invasion of Iraq, and those companies are Exxon-Mobil and Shell. The rest of the oil industry and companies such as Texaco, Citgo, Chevron and BP have been harmed greatly by the war in Iraq due to the destabilization of the region from the invasion.
Simple math can disprove the theory that oil companies are “getting rich” from this war. In 1998 oil was 10 dollars per barrel and we paid $1.25 at the pump. There are 42 gallons in a barrel meaning that every barrel sold made a gross profit of $52.50 for the companies—take out the cost of buying said oil and it’s a profit of $42.50. Contrasted to today where oil is now $120 dollars per barrel and we pay $3.69, meaning a gross profit of $154.98. Take out the cost of buying that oil and the profit is $34.98 per barrel. That’s a significant decrease in the main product these companies sell.
The second thing to understand is that Exxon-Mobil, Shell or even BP do not set the price of oil, the world market does. Satan himself could be the one in control of the oil fields in Iraq and that product would still have to enter through the world market where it would be speculated on and then priced. Who controls the oil fields is secondary to the many people involved in pricing that oil.
Moving away from that particular slogan, I also overheard Professor Anderson chanting, “Stop the greedy, feed the needy!” I didn’t stop to ask the good Professor to elaborate on this point but can logically assume he was referring to President Bush and yes, the Iraq War. Unfortunately, this
war is not making money for anybody—the President included. President Bush made $923,807 this year according to his tax returns—of course the salary as President accounts for $400,000 of that, but where did the other $523,000 come from? Did it come from oil companies and shady deals with Halliburton? Nope. It did come from the market, but most of the President’s investments are in the same mutual funds as most Americans, not oil companies. So I am left to wonder who is exactly profiting from this war and where are these greedy deviants? The soldiers and Marines in Iraq certainly aren’t amassing any kind of substantial wealth regardless of their rank or pay-grade. The President’s money has come largely from mutual funds and his salary as President (you can view President Bush’s stock portfolio online quite easily) and the American citizens certainly are not making any kind of profit on this war.
It’s this kind of factually inaccurate war protest that not only astounds me because of the sheer amount of ignorance involved in the slogans, but also offends me. Chanting, “No more war for oil,” diminishes the morale of every soldier and marine by questioning his or her mission. You cannot claim “support” for the troops while simultaneously implying that every service member over there is fighting for petty greed.
Lastly, I would like to address the absurd comment made by Jon Harris who stated, “What do you think we could do with $700 plus billion a year other than blow stuff up and kill people?” This remark betrays ignorance on the part of Mr. Harris about how money in the military is spent. The implication is that the U.S military spends $700 billion dollars inventing ways to “blow stuff up” and to “kill people.” To be sure, there is some spending involved in those areas, but a large chunk of the spending (more than 50%) goes towards gear designed to protect service members from being blown up or killed and to vehicles involved primarily for protected transport (such as the MRAP) and to unmanned reconnaissance vehicles as well as a large variety of programs designed on how to limit death.
If you’re going to protest the war, you should at least attempt to be educated about it. Inventing chants that intentionally or unintentionally misrepresent the conflict do not help your cause. They only make you look fanatical. In closing, I would like to leave you with a quote from John Stuart Mill:
“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made so and kept so by the exertions of better men then himself.”
Mr. DeGraff is a music major enrolled in the BA performance program.
Students Against Nuclear Energy (SANE) at JSC