"...Green Tech Coup: Military Industry on the Offensive"

[amborin]

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"Greening" the military, by all indications, is a movement of false solutions. Struck with the overwhelming cost of oil-based fuel, the Air Force plans to transition to 50% coal-to-liquids and biomass synthetic fuel by 2016. That's right, coal-fired bombers and fighter jets. Ingenious! The Navy is pushing a similarly backward approach: GMO biofuels for aircraft; hybrid and eventually all-electric ships. More coal, more nukes, and yet another subsidy for industrial agriculture, arguably the US' most economically and environmentally unsustainable sector. This push for false solutions reveals the deep contradictions of "greening" war.

The Economist gets to the heart of the matter, explaining that the new military industrial agenda "is not a question of preventing climate change, reducing dependence on imported oil, or even complying with President Barack Obama's green agenda. The need for alternative sources of energy is a military necessity." In Afghanistan, it takes 7 gallons of fuel to deliver 1 gallon for use in battle. Fuel supply lines are the US' greatest vulnerability there and in Iraq. "A gallon of jet fuel that costs $1.05 ends up costing $400 by the time it gets to Afghanistan..." reports the NDIA journal in articles with titles like "Gargantuan Thirst for Fuel Creates Logistical Nightmare for Marines" and "Tough to Free Troops From Oppressive Tyranny of Fuel".

It's a cruel irony to claim that the military is oppressed by the "tyranny of fuel." In reality, US troops are acting under orders to enforce the tyranny of fuel and oppress Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis and whosoever else has the misfortune of living in the midst of strategic oil and natural gas reserves. My thanks go to the NDIA for letting me use this language without sounding like a total wing nut.

The resource-grab behind the expansionist US War on Terror in the Middle East and Central Asia is the real tyranny here. It's a war for fossil fuels fought in the service of US-allied multinational energy corporations. I wont beat a dead camel and explain the oil agenda behind the Iraq war, but the resource interests behind the Afghanistan war bear repeating.

Buried under the deception of anti-terror propaganda is the reality that Afghanistan is a key route for US energy interests seeking to access otherwise Russian-controlled Central Asian natural gas and oil. In a pre-war document that can be recovered from internet archives, The US Dept of Energy, Energy Information Administration explained.....

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http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/02/03-6

[DJ13]

1. Steam powered stealth bomber?