As We Die for BP, Our Military Rots in the Wrong Gulf

As you read this, the life of our bodies, nation and planet is being
blown out a corporate hole in the Gulf of Mexico and into a Dead Zone
of no return.

The apocalyptic gusher of oily poison pouring into the waters
that give us life can only be viewed--felt--by each and every one of
us as an on-going death by a thousand cuts with no end in sight.

Yet our government--allegedly the embodiment of our
collective will to survive--has done nothing of significance to fight
this mass murder.

As it did while New Orleans drowned downstream from a willfully
neglected levee system, our most potentially effective counter-force
dithers on the other side of the world, in the wrong Gulf.

We squander our treasure on the largest conglomeration of
people and weapons the world has ever seen. It's bloated with hardware
designed specifically to destroy and kill. Hundreds of thousands of
Americans sit on our dime in more than a hundred countries, rotting in
the outposts of a bygone empire.

Why aren't they in the Gulf of Mexico, fighting for our truest "national security"?

The depth and scope of this catastrophe is impossible to grasp
because it is just beginning. The entire Gulf, the west coast of
Florida, the Everglades, the east coast of Florida and all the way up,
wherever the currents go... they are all at risk.

This is the most lethal single attack on the life of this
nation since December 7, 1941. It is a time that will live only in
infamy.

The moment it happened, a sane president, a functional
government, a society worthy of survival, would have marshaled every
mobile resource available and moved it down to the Gulf.

Except by hitting a nuclear power plant and rendering this all
radioactive, no terrorist could dream of igniting the kind of havoc now
destroying our most vital, precious and irreplaceable resources.

Our mass media should be filled with stirring images of a
focussed, determined President mobilizing all available assets to curb
the damage. Instead, Barack Obama defends offshore drilling and
endorses the resumption of whaling--if this underwater gusher actually
leaves any alive. It is a suicidal tribute to the power of corporate
ownership.

Instead of a seeing a Gulf population deputized and mobilized
to fight for survival, we are subjected to a loathsome trio of
corporate stooges--apparently named Larry, Curly and Moe--blaming
each other for the catastrophe. They should all be clamped into orange
jumpsuits and locked onto a clean-up vessel.

Thus far the only armies officially mobilized are of the
corporate PR departments and ubiquitous lawyers savoring the gusher of
billable hours sure to stretch through the decades.

Our collective non-response to this cataclysmic reality now
includes the introduction of a pathetic "climate bill", concocted by
another woeful trio, in service to the very corporations that have
brought us this lethal gusher.

This bill will do nothing to solve this particular problem.
Nor will it address the root cause of our addiction to obsolete and
suicidal fossil and nuclear fuels at a time when the clean, cheap
renewable alternatives are readily available. It is, in short, Beyond
Tragic.

Make no mistake: in our lifetime, the Gulf will not recover. Nor will our species.

There are no corners of the Earth that we can pollute without
poisoning it all... and our own bodies. We cannot squander our
resources on killing people on the other side of the Earth while
leaving ourselves to be destroyed by the mayhem at home.

Either our species learns this lesson, and acts on it--Now!--or we do not survive.