After reading and hearing about the Veterans for American Power Tour for several months, I finally had my opportunity recently to get on the bus.  I met the team in Shreveport, Louisiana to start the snowball rolling.  Like any snowball it started small with just myself, a fellow Iron Soldier from 1st Armored Division Robin Eckstein and the support staff from Operation Free.  The tour bus I had heard so much about was in maintenance so we substituted with a compact car.  Like I said, start small and grow.

We began our media engagement with an editorial board at the Shreveport Times.  I led off with my story of how I became engaged in this movement via studying casualties in Iraq and growing to understand our true national vulnerability to a commodity we do not control.  After my lofty 30,000 ft view of the issue, my fellow veteran told the story of being in convoys delivering fuel in Iraq.  She calmly told a story of being a large, slow moving target for snipers, IEDs and ground attacks as she delivered the lifeblood of our forward operating bases.  In a matter-of-fact manner she related what life on the airport road was like, but declined to discuss her personal experiences of loss, as many of these young heroes do.

From there it was off to meet the Mayor of Shreveport.  Mayor Cedric Glover was interested in the message and then asked the central question, “What would you change?”  We gave him our pat answer on the climate change bill and added some thoughts on open fuel standards, but what he was really asking was, “How does this affect the voters of Shreveport?”  The answer to that is that thousands of young veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan are coming home, do not want to fight for oil again, and are looking to their political leadership for just that: Leadership.  And if they don’t get it, they will hold people accountable at the polls.

From Shreveport we loaded up the compact and drove to New Orleans, staying the night on the outskirts of the 9th District. The bus had finally arrived!  The next day, with several more veterans added to the tour, we met with local television reporters with the bus as our backdrop .  Unfortunately, this was my last day, so after a whirlwind tour (and at least one hurricane), I left the bus and headed home to Tampa.

This tour was most enlightening.  I had the opportunity to meet the great young vets of OpFree and see how passionately they delivered the message of breaking our addiction to oil.  This small group of heroes is growing steadily.  The message that our dependence on a commodity we do not control creates a national security vulnerability is compelling, and no one can question these veterans’ patriotism.  Operation Free is a rising tide in 2010.  If our leadership fails to act on the various energy bills before them, OpFree will be a tsunami in 2012.  It is time to heed this message and act to counter our security risk, our economic drain and the environmental damage done every day, all consequences of our addiction to oil.  It is about responsibility and accountability, two values these veterans understand.

Col. Dan Nolan, US Army (ret.) is CEO of Sabot 6, Inc. based Valrico, Florida  and member of Operation Free.

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