Islamic State earns about $500 million a year from its oil revenues. But according to former CIA director Mike Morrell, US fighter aircraft have been ordered not to bomb their oil wells in case they cause “environmental damage.”
Yes. That makes sense. Clearly one of the main priorities in any war of attrition should be to do everything possible to protect your enemies’ lives, wellbeing and resources.
Some might argue that a merciless death cult which now controls swathes of Iraq and Syria and a population of around 10 million, which makes $2 billion a year from oil and extortion, which rapes and enslaves girls as young as eight, tortures and kills prisoners, chucks gay men off buildings, and is committed to the destruction of Western civilisation, ought not to be treated with kid gloves.
But wiser souls in the Obama administration and at higher levels of the US military have clearly taken a more enlightened, eco-sensitive position: yes, Islamic State may behave inappropriately on occasion, but that is definitely no excuse to engage in tactical bombing operations which may cause serious damage to infrastructure, make the sand in the area all oily and black and sticky for miles around, and release into the atmosphere particles which not only could give nearby jihadis asthma attacks but could also drastically increase the Syria region’s carbon footprint, possibly causing global warming to increase by 0.0000000000000000000000001 degree c by the end of the century.
If only the Allies had applied a similarly enlightened policy in World War II we’d all be in a much better place I’m sure.
It would have meant, for example, that there would have been no environmentally insensitive bombing of oil refineries like the ones in Romania. Some Germans – including fighter ace Adolf Galland; head of the Luftwaffe Hermann Göring; and armaments minister Albert Speer – believed that without the Oil Campaign Hitler might have won.
But in environmental terms, perhaps a Nazi victory would have been for the best. Apart from modern day California, Nazi Germany was almost certainly the most eco-friendly state on earth: the first to ban smoking on public transport; the first to take animal rights seriously (Göring once threatened to send people found guilty of animal experimentation to the death camps); the first to pass national environmental laws; the first to champion organic food and vegetarianism.
Nazi Germans also put a great deal of thought about what to do with the population problem – and, at Wannsee, how to solve it. They really cared about open spaces and overcrowding (Lebensraum).
And they weren’t afraid to put their money where their mouth was, either: if the Germans had won the war, you can bet your bottom Reichsmark that there would be no pussy-footing around at next week’s Paris eco-summit. It would be a case of reduce your carbon emissions, schnell – or off to the death camps.
Now that our world thinkers from John Kerry to the Pope to the Prince of Wales are telling us that “climate change” represents a greater threat to civilisation than “terrorism”, it is entirely appropriate that our military should be compelled to prioritise environmental issues over tactical and strategic ones.
As I reported earlier this year, the Obama administration has already signalled that it considers wind farms a more important priority than air combat training, early warning systems or national security.
We can therefore be confident that when any well trained USAF pilot is about to launch a missile on to a black horde of jihadis about to overwhelm a Special Forces patrol and he suddenly hears the words: “ABORT! ABORT! EcoCom reports that there is a SNAIL DARTER colony in the region. I repeat. SNAIL DARTER colony,” he can cancel the mission and sacrifice the SEALs in good conscience. (Though obviously this wouldn’t be the case of they were real seals with flippers and pointy grey snouts with cute whiskers and an ability to balance coloured balls on their noses. Real seals would have to be saved at whatever cost.)
Nor is what some might call Green Wussification a problem confined to the US military alone. Gaia-worshipping ecotards will be relieved to hear that the current head of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, is very much one of their own.
Before becoming Secretary General of NATO last year, Stoltenberg was the United Nation’s Special Envoy on Climate Change. He was also the co-chair – with the late Ethiopian dictator Meles Zenawi – of the Panel on High Level Climate Finance, a veritable rogues’ gallery of one-world-government control freaks and devious technocrats and greedy troughers including Lord Stern, Christine Lagarde and George Soros.
Some may have wondered at the time what exactly qualified a bland green career politician to take on the leadership of the world’s most powerful military alliance. Now it’s becoming clearer. The Green Wussification of the West’s military is no accident. It’s part of the plan.