Conflict Health Reading For July 6th 2010

Is the Internet Making Americans More Willing to Intervene in Faraway Countries?

Kirsch argues that this can be a very good thing. As someone who has become a vertebral anti-interventionist, I cannot agree. I am far more sympathetic to Kirsch’s emphasis on the ever-present possibility of our being wrong in our understanding. But is this view, though true as far as it goes, finally not still too benign? My own view is that Baudelaire was in fact closer to the mark when he wrote that, “Any newspaper, from the first line to the last, is nothing but a web of horrors. I cannot understand how an innocent hand can touch a newspaper without convulsing in disgust.” The reason we do not share Baudelaire’s horror is that what the consumer of news is getting is not reality but that simulacrum of reality: spectacle. Guy Debord, call your office.

The Long Emergency

The U.S. administration counters that more money than ever is going into global health — it’s just no longer myopically focused on HIV/AIDS. The United States responded to the HIV/AIDS emergency a decade ago, the policy’s defenders say; now it’s time to take a broader, more sustainable approach that can eventually move patients away from their reliance on the United States. As congressional appropriations come up for 2011, battle lines are being drawn.

U.S. Troops Face New Threat: Afghanistan’s Toxic Sand

U.S. troops already face plenty of threats in Afghanistan: AK-47–wielding insurgents, improvised bombs, an intransigent and incompetent government. Now add a less familiar challenge to that list of woes: Afghanistan’s toxic sand.

The pulverized turf, it turns out, contains high levels of manganese, silicon, iron, magnesium, aluminum, chromium and other metals that act as neurotoxic agents when ingested. Combine the country’s frequent sandstorms and the kicked-up dust that results from helicopter travel with troops’ nostrils, mouths and pores, and you’ve got an unexpected example of how inhospitable the terrain is for the soon-to-be 98,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines fighting the war.

Endless War, A Recipe For Four-Star Arrogance

To be an American soldier today is to serve a people who find nothing amiss in the prospect of armed conflict without end. Once begun, wars continue, persisting regardless of whether they receive public support. President Obama’s insistence to the contrary notwithstanding, this nation is not even remotely “at” war. In explaining his decision to change commanders without changing course in Afghanistan, the president offered this rhetorical flourish: “Americans don’t flinch in the face of difficult truths.” In fact, when it comes to war, the American people avert their eyes from difficult truths. Largely unaffected by events in Afghanistan and Iraq and preoccupied with problems much closer to home, they have demonstrated a fine ability to tune out war. Soldiers (and their families) are left holding the bag.

Throughout history, circumstances such as these have bred praetorianism, warriors becoming enamored with their moral superiority and impatient with the failings of those they are charged to defend. The smug disdain for high-ranking civilians casually expressed by McChrystal and his chief lieutenants — along with the conviction that “Team America,” as these officers style themselves, was bravely holding out against a sea of stupidity and corruption — suggests that the officer corps of the United States is not immune to this affliction.

Christopher R. Albon is a political science Ph.D. specializing in armed conflict, public health, human security, and health diplomacy.

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