Currently in Iraq, the suicide rate among soldiers is 35 percent higher than it was among soldiers in the Vietnam War and “it is estimated that somewhere between 15 and 30 percent of all soldiers who come home from Iraq have clinical Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome,” Dr. Paul Kaplan said during a symposium Wednesday in the Robert D. Clark Library.
Kaplan and Dr. Richard Barnhart, representing the Lane County Chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility/Beyond War, presented “The Health Effects of War and a Sensible Approach for a Safe America,” a speech about the far-reaching health effects of war and alternatives to the way the U.S. government is dealing with terrorism.
PSR/BW is a non-partisan group whose premise is to solve conflicts without violence.
“Since World War I there have been 250 wars in the world and over 110 million war-related deaths,” Kaplan said.
As he spoke he showed slides depicting the physical damage war can induce, apologizing for the graphic nature but insisting they were necessary to get his point across.
“In World War I, about 14 percent of the people that were killed were non-military people,” Kaplan said. “In the 1990s, in the Gulf War and in the Iraq War, 90 percent of the casualties are now civilian.”
Kaplan went on to discuss land mines and the consequences of cluster bombs.
“It’s estimated that 120 million land mines are still buried in 70 countries around the world,” he said as he showed a slide of an elephant with its hoof blown off as a result of a land mine.
Kaplan criticized the war on
terrorism, stating that current U.S. policies include pre-emptive
war, unilateralism, rejection of treaties and development of new
nuclear weapons.
“Is it okay for us to develop new nuclear weapons and to be testing those weapons and say to any other country in the world ‘well you can’t do that’?” Kaplan said.
Barnhart said the United State’s current pre-emptive war policy is illegal and immoral, and that it is setting a precedent other countries could follow.
“(It) generates ill will; abandoning nuclear treaties and expanding our nuclear program endangers us all,” Barnhart said. “In light of this we pose this question: Is war an effective way to deter terrorism, or is there a better way?”
He compared attacking Afghanistan and Iraq to hitting a dandelion with a golf club, saying “it just ensures another generation of al-Qaida.”
PSR/BW’s SMART security platform offers a different solution. Barnhart said it’s based on supporting international diplomacy, adhering to international law, stopping the spread of nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction, collaborating with other nations, funding humanitarian and foreign aid and changing budget priorities. After explaining the platform in detail, Barnhart urged the audience to join them in “thinking rationally.”
Kaplan said other effects of war include those resulting from damage created by chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, infrastructure destruction, economic impacts and environmental destruction.
Caitlin Gadoua, promotions assistant of the Robert D. Clark Honors College, said Physicians for Social Responsibility was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985 after discovering the health effects of nuclear radiation on children.
Kaplan said nuclear testing itself is a problem that has resulted in 80,000 American civilians contracting cancer and in 15,000 deaths worldwide.
Kaplan and Barnhart both focused on the amount the U.S. government spends on military defense compared with the amount they spend on health care.
“The U.S. spends more money on their military budget than all other countries of the world combined,” Kaplan said. He said the U.S. government spends half its budget on military defense and only 6 percent on health care, adding that in Oregon in 2003, $810 million went to funding the Iraq War while Oregon’s budget shortfall, needed to adequately fund schools, health-care services and social services, was $802 million.
PSR/BW will give the same free presentation, open to the public, on May 4 at 7 p.m. in the Eugene Water and Electric Board building boardroom.

[email protected]