Notable & Quotable: Climate Change and War

Robert H. Scales, a retired Army major general: ‘Our men and women in uniform are
smart and perceptive. They can spot phoniness in a heartbeat.’
April 18, 2016 7:18 p.m. ET

From April 13 testimony by Robert H. Scales, a retired Army major general,
before the U.S. Senate Committee on Environmental and Public Works regarding the
Obama administration’s linking of climate change and national security:

The common spark for all wars is jealousy and greed amplified by centuries-long animosities and political ambitions. The catalyst for war is the ignorance of leaders that leads them to misjudge. Humans start wars believing they will be profitable, short, glorious and bloodless. These truths never change. None are affected in the least by air temperature.

But the myth of climate change as an inducement to war continues to curry favor among Washington elites. One source for connecting war to temperature comes from the political closeness between environmentalists and the antiwar movement. Their logic goes like this: “Global warming is bad. Wars are bad. Therefore they must be connected.” Remember, prior to the 1991 Gulf War, environmentalists warned of a decade of global cooling that would come from burning Kuwaiti oil fields. . . .

Because the administration has elevated climate change to the status of a primary threat, the military has become an unwitting agent for propagandizing the dangers of climate change to the American people. . . .

The administration’s contention that climate change is a national-security threat would be just another example of mindlessly applied political correctness if it were not for the potential impact of this silliness on our actual security.
The military follows orders and intuitively embraces the spoken intent of their commander in chief. A politically correct embrace of climate change as a national-security threat might in time cause our military to embrace alternative sources of energy before these technologies are proven. Should this happen, our men and women in uniform might well be fighting a war with underpowered and poorly performing weapons.

In its zeal to follow orders the military might deflect resources away from fighting the war against global terrorism to fight a contrived war against global warming. Every dollar spent on initiatives that don’t apply directly to fighting the enemy and keeping our soldiers and Marines safe on the battlefield is a dollar needlessly wasted. Again, no soldier should die in battle for the sake of political correctness.

Our men and women in uniform are smart and perceptive. They can spot phoniness in a heartbeat. Think of a soldier in Afghanistan or Iraq returning from a dangerous and exhausting mission being obliged to listen to a senior defense official lecture them on the revelation that fighting climate change is their most important mission.
These men and women see the realities of battle all around them. The military threat of rising temperatures is not one of them.

Our young military leaders are already jaded and discouraged by an administration that seems to be out of touch with their real world, day to day, life or death needs. Do we really think that they will become more confident about the wisdom of their leaders if they are obliged to turn away from ISIS and fight a war against rising temperatures? Somehow I don’t think so.