Detroit Free Press. November 6, 2010.

by Steve Maddox

Steve Maddox, of West Bloomfield, is a former Marine Corps Captain and an Iraq War Veteran. He is an alumnus of Cornell’s Johnson Graduate School of Management and a Truman National Security Fellow.

Americans would probably be surprised to learn that the most precious resource on a modern battlefield, in Iraq or Afghanistan, isn’t ammunition or rations, tanks or Humvees. Those things are certainly important, but fuel — gasoline — is the most critical resource to the modern military.

Seeing this dependency first hand as a Marine Officer in Iraq’s Haditha Triad made me start to think long and hard about our nation’s dangerous dependence on oil from unfriendly nations — and about the best ways to end it. That’s why so many veterans across the country, who have seen this dependence first hand, are excited about the Environmental Protection Agency’s new car mileage standards.

When we fill up at the pump, we are pouring millions of dollars a day into the treasuries of hostile nations. Much of that money funnels into the coffers of those same terrorist groups our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines face every day. Enemy bullets and IEDs are bought with our dirty oil money and fired back upon our own men and women — often imported or funded by countries like Iran. This cycle is unacceptable, dangerous, and must be stopped. Congress failed to pass energy and climate legislation this summer, but there is still much that can be done to solve this threat to national security.

By raising our fuel efficiency standards we can dramatically lower the amount of oil we require as a nation to go about our daily lives, thereby stemming the flow of money to enemy nations and diminishing the disastrous consequences of climate change.

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