The US’s military adventures — and, just as often, its misadventures — have inspired thousands upon thousands of books. But the military isn’t just in the business of inspiring books: Sometimes it bans them, too.
The Pentagon recently announced that it was refusing to carry a new book by journalist (and veteran) Joseph Hickman in the stores on US military bases. It’s called The Burn Pits: The Poisoning of America’s Soldiers.
Burn pits, NPR reports, are “acres-wide mounds of waste near bases” containing “everything from batteries to vehicle scraps to amputated body parts.” These refuse piles, once set aflame with jet fuel, can burn for 24 hours a day. They expose our troops and other personnel to deadly toxic fumes.
Banning books is bad enough. But there’s a bigger issue here: Why does the Pentagon expose our soldiers to deadly poisons and then pretend it hasn’t happened?
Hickman’s Burn Pits exposes a link between military service near burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan and serious maladies, including everything from respiratory illnesses to rare brain cancers. Indeed, Hickman says, Vice President Joe Biden’s son Beau died of one of these rare brain cancers after serving in Iraq.
The Pentagon’s ban comes despite the fact that the book is an Amazon bestseller and has been reviewed favorably in media around the world. So it seems like a sure bet that the brass doesn’t intend to change its policy of exposing our soldiers to these deadly toxins. By officially sticking their heads in the sand, they’re hoping the problem will go away.
The problem won’t go away, though. Agent Orange didn’t go away after Vietnam. Gulf War Syndrome didn’t go away after Desert Storm. And now brave men and women who wanted nothing more than to serve their country are dying prematurely.
The effects on families are devastating. Just ask Joe Biden.
Or ask Tammy McCracken. Her husband David was one of my best friends. We were nearly inseparable since the age of 15.
David’s father was a highly decorated hero from World War II. David wanted nothing more than to follow in his dad’s footsteps. All through high school he talked only about joining the army. He was commissioned as a lieutenant after college and eventually rose to the rank of full colonel.
David had a degree in environmental engineering, so the army assigned him to manage garbage collection in Iraq early in the war. Our friends and I used to jokingly call him the “Garbage King of Iraq.”
None of us knew that the Pentagon’s policy of burning garbage — all of it, no matter what it is — was going to kill our friend.
But it did. In 2011, David developed a very rare form of brain cancer. He was diagnosed only days after running a marathon. Eight months later, he was dead.
He was just 47.
The burn pits were operated largely by KBR, a former subsidiary of Halliburton — the military contractor once helmed by Dick Cheney. It was KBR that decided to burn the garbage, with Pentagon approval. Instead of burying the garbage, KBR just bulldozed it into pits and set it on fire.
An attorney has filed a class action suit against KBR on behalf of veterans who believe they were sickened by the burn pits. Hundreds have come forward. And nearly 60,000 people may have been affected.
The Defense Department has to stand up for our soldiers and do the right thing. First, it needs to put out those burn pits. Second, it must acknowledge that the pits are causing these illnesses, as already confirmed by medical experts. Finally, it must take responsibility for healing the veterans affected.
Now’s not the time to bury the truth. It’s time to help our soldiers.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.