Clean Energy is Critical to National Security

by Mike Breen (The Hill/E2Wire/Truman National Security Project) As a young Lieutenant on my first combat tour, in Iraq, I served on an isolated fighting camp south of Baghdad in an area known as the “Triangle of Death.” My unit was entirely dependent on daily fuel convoys to power our generators and fuel our vehicles. Recognizing this, Iraqi insurgents consistently ambushed the convoys while my infantry company fought to protect them—leading to almost-daily firefights we jokingly called “fighting for our supper.” The insurgents had recognized a crucial weakness, one that Osama bin Laden referred to as America’s “Achilles heel”: our dependence on oil as a single source of fuel.
Today, I am a member of Operation Free, a national coalition of veterans who believe that climate change and our dependence on fossil fuels is a threat to America’s national security. These men and women have walked the burning oil fields of Iraq and patrolled the mountain roads of Afghanistan—where the fully-burdened cost of fuel is $30 a gallon and 1 in 24 fuel convoys ends in an American casualty. It is an established consensus in the defense community that our energy posture directly impacts our country’s safety. READ MORE and MORE (DomesticFuel.com) and MORE (Biofuels Digest) Written Testimony US House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee