Funding both sides of the war

Gen. James Jones, former National Security Adviser and Commandant of the Marine Corps, said “Half of our trade deficit goes toward buying oil from abroad, and some of that money ends up in the hands of terrorists.” This has to stop.

About 40 percent of our oil is imported. Much of that comes from countries like Saudi Arabia that use oil revenues to fund the jihadist ideology to the tune of billions of dollars each year. Money that goes towards killing Americans.

Every president since Dwight Eisenhower has informed Americans that we must reduce our dependence on foreign oil. But that statement has become nothing more than political rhetoric as imported oil has climbed steadily since. An abundant flow of inexpensive oil is essential for a prosperous American economy. Once the flow of oil is interrupted, we are in a world of hurt as we saw in the oil embargo by Arab nations in 1973.

Tom Mullikin – environmental lawyer, global expedition leader, and soon-to-be commander of South Carolina’s State Guard – recently briefed the Columbia (S.C.) Chamber of Commerce on how climate change and American energy affects our military and national security. From Midlandsbiz:

“If you look at a graph of global energy reserves from around 1960 compared to now, you will see that state-owned companies control around 80 percent of these reserves compared to 15 percent decades ago,” said Mullikin. “Needless to say, many of these state-owned companies are controlled by governments of hostile nations. We are buying energy from our opponents, and they don’t want to see us energy independent.”

It shouldn’t take an expert to tell us it is a bad idea to depend on nations hostile to U.S. interests for strategic resources. Especially when we sit on massive reserves of oil and natural gas. Enough to turn the United States into the Saudi Arabia of the future… if we can get Washington out of the way.

Mullikin urged veterans to speak out in support of shale energy and technologies such as “hydraulic fracturing, also known as ‘fracking,’ which has made production of these resources possible.” He emphasized that the emergence of American shale resources “provide the U.S. the opportunity to stop putting bullets in the guns of our adversaries. The people opposing the development of these energy resources are those whose funding has been traced back to – and this probably won’t surprise you – the Middle East (specifically the United Arab Emirates) and Putin’s Russia.”

Mullikin also spoke on climate change:

“The folks on one side [of the climate change issue] will say the sky is falling today and we need to turn the lights out in the country. The people on the other side of the equation will say the climate is not changing. If I’m here to dispel anything, it’s to tell you that both parties are dead wrong. There is a lot of room in between. And there are a lot of reasons why we all need to be concerned about this issue from both a national energy security and economic standpoint.”​

Humans certainly do have some degree of impact on the environment. Some parts of our planet are cooling and some are heating. But we have seen numerous cases of agenda-driven scientists manipulating data to fit the man-made global warming narrative. So who can we trust and how much is the planet’s climate actually changing? The debate is certainly not “over” as Al Gore wants us to think – there should be a healthy debate about how much of an impact humans actually have on the environment and what should be done to reduce the effect.