The Battle of Environmentalists versus the US Military

As America's military deploys troops, armor, planes and ordinance to bases in the Middle East surrounding Iraq, they will do so after years of fending off another kind of attack, one by the massed forces of environmental organizations that have done everything in their power to reduce and restrict the ability of our military to train its soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen.

A Green Fifth Column has waged its own war on this nation's ability to be ready for war on land, sea and air, seeking through legislation and litigation to thwart the training of our military forces and hinder the development of new weapons systems. It is the largely untold and unknown battle of environmentalists versus the US military.

After sixty years as the best and only live-fire training range and training area for amphibious landings for the US Atlantic Fleet, Vieques, a Puerto Rican island, will be shut down in 2003 by a coalition of environmental groups and politicians that included Hillary Clinton and Robert Kennedy, Jr. Without such training, you can count on "friendly fire" accidents that will cost the lives of American troops in the field.

Late last year, in California, the Navy was pressured to fly fewer bombing runs (using nonexploding dummy bombs) at Fort Hunter Liggett near Big Sur. Environmental radicals claimed that fairy shrimp pools and endangered mint plants had a higher priority than the ability of fighter pilots to hit targets that posed a threat to ground troops or our ships at sea. Lawsuits on behalf of the snowy plover severely restricted the training of Navy SEALs on California's Coronado Island. Marines can train in California's Mojave Desert only during the daytime to avoid endangering tortoises as if a determined enemy would never fight at night.

Since 1941, the Barry Goldwater bombing range in a desolate area of Arizona, south of Phoenix, has been the training ground for WWII pilots and, in modern times, F-16 and A-10 pilots. Defenders of the Wild, an environmental group, waged a battle of lawsuits forcing the military to be more concerned about so-called endangered lizards and Sonoran pronghorn antelope than on the lives of our troops in combat.

In Florida, the Pinecastle bombing range, nestled in the Ocala National Forest, has been under siege by groups called "Forests Not Bombs" and "Friends of Gaia" who believe gopher tortoises have a greater priority than the ability to wage war swiftly and decisively.

There are restrictions on training for amphibious landings at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina because of limits during turtle-nesting season and because of a rare species of woodpecker. Lawsuits by environmentalists to protect a tree snail shut down Hawaii's Makua Military Reservation in 1998.

In May of this year, a federal court issued a 30-day injunction banning the military from conducting any kind of training on Farallon de Medinilla in the Northern Marianas Islands because the Center for Biological Diversity filed a lawsuit in 2000 against the Navy and the Department of Defense to end live-fire training exercises, claiming they violated the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.

One would think that the lives of those who have volunteered to protect America against its enemies in war would be sufficient reason to spare our military these and other restriction on their ability to train our armed forces, but they are not. So far as the Greens are concerned, human life is secondary to various species of flora and fauna.

As recently as August, an environmental coalition led by the Natural Resources Defense Council, sued the Navy to stop using a powerful new sonar system to detect enemy submarines, claiming that it can harm whales and dolphins.

All this is occurring against the background of the 2001 attack on American soil that killed more than 3,000 civilians, commercial jet passengers, and on the Pentagon itself. It simply does not matter to the Greens and therein lies the truth of their loyalty to this nation.

The same Pentagon that suffered losses when al Qaeda terrorists crashed a commercial jet into it on 9-11, spends $4 billion dollars a year to comply with the endless environmental laws that have been imposed on this nation to thwart every kind of manufacturing, provision of energy, development of every description, logging, mining, and agricultural activity.

For years now, those laws, particularly the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act, have been used as a weapons against our military by Greens intent on finding every means possible to limit this nation's ability to train its armed personnel and test new forms of military hardware to fight sophisticated weaponry arrayed against this nation.

Under threat from foreign nations seeking or possessing weapons of mass destruction and by secret Jihad cells of terrorists at home, the Greens continue to wage their own war on our ability to protect our troops wherever they are needed and our civilian population's domestic security.

The time has long passed when all branches of our military should be freed from these environmental restrictions in order that they need no longer fight the domestic battle against as determined an enemy of this nation as any to be found in far-flung lands across the oceans.

Reminds me of my time in Ft. Carson, CO. We went out for a three week training exercise once and could only do actual maneuvers for 5 days. We spent the rest of the time doing nothing. We where so mad about it when a General showed up and asked us how we liked his exercise we unanimously told him "It sucked". This is an old story. The reality of the matter is that military training areas are almost always pristine wildernesses because no development is allowed. However, the leftists want to take it away from the military, whom they despise, and give it to their rich friends to turn into shopping malls and housing tracts. So much for environmentalism.

--tungsten bullets in 5.56mm ammo are another manifestation of this idiocy, adopted by politically correct officers during the Clinton malAdminisration, of course--

Obviously you're familiar with this idiocy, but in case anyone else wants details on the tungsten bullets (I believe the main source for the tungsten will be China)here's a thread.

This enviro-crap is just that...CRAP.

One of the few things the Costitution provdes the Federal Government is protecting the country from attack, and I would assume that means training for such.

Let's face it folks...both parties only care about their own POWER, and will cave to any well organized bunch of shitheads to keep it.

I'm sick of the whole bunch....I'd write more, but if this doesn't get me bounced outta here, the rest I would write sure would.

FMCDH

Tungsten Bullets from ore mined in China, and manufactured in a plant partially owned by Marc Rich I might add.

Meanwhile, as of last year, the illegal sale of tungsten from US DLA strategic reserves continues.

The last cross country vacation I took I visited old friends at a couple of military live fire training facilities and was shown maps of TREES and then PAINTED
TREES that had to be 'protected'. I suspect the watermelons (green on the outside, red on the inside) should know - and do know - that sooner or later all watermelons must be eaten or will rot...

Just took my family down to San Fran this long weekend. I'm active duty navy and what to my suprise the weekend we're there is fleet week and air show. Was standing out on pier 39 watching the blue angels when some nutbars behind me started complaining about the noise they were making and the terrible pollution they were leaving behind (you know, those innocuous "smoke" trails they turn on and off for effect). I turned around and said with all the disgust towards these left-coast whackos "That, my friends, is the sound of freedom."

Bought me a couple loaves of sourdough and got the hell out of dodge.

During my nine + years as a Regular Army officer, my soldiers' training was compromised by the prairie mole cricket (Ft. Riley, KS), the red cockaded woodpecker (Ft. Bragg, NC / Ft. Stewart, GA) the indigo king snake (or some such thing at Ft. Stewart, GA), the desert tortoise (Ft. Irwin, CA) and siebert stakes (tree nursery markers, in Hoehenfehls, Ger.)

As a platoon leader or company commander we would do our best and treat the off-limit areas as chemically contaminated or mined. It still sucks when you can't teach troops to dig a proper defensive fighting position for fear of disrupting the habitat of the prairie mole cricket...

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