The U.S. military has reached a point where it no longer believes that it should be bogged down or inconvenienced by environmental protection laws. The Pentagon is petitioning Congress to allow the military to be exempt from environmental laws that protect marine mammals and endangered species and laws that require the cleanup of potentially toxic weapons sites.
 
Allowing the U.S. military exemption from laws that have an important function in our society is the same as allowing police to live above the laws that they enforce. The laws exist to protect endangered species and our environment. Who destroys the animals or the land and how and why it is destroyed does not matter.
 
The Readiness and Range Preservation Initiative is sponsored by the White House and seeks exemptions from several environmental laws passed by the White House, the government and the people. The laws the military is seeking exemption from are:
 
• A section of the Endangered Species Act that protects wildlife habitat.
 
• Sections of the Marine Mammal Protection Act that prohibit harassment of whales, dolphins, manatees and other sea mammals.
 
• Part of the Superfund statute that covers cleanups of explosives and munitions.
 
• Clean Air Act requirements for military vehicles during training.
 
• Hazardous waste laws that prohibit exposed toxic substances and require paying damages to states in cases of contamination.
 
The military is whining that these laws hamper training.
 
“It creates a lot of problems when you have to work around something,” a Defense Department spokesman, Glenn Flood, told the Los Angeles Times. “Our guys have to hit the beach, walk on a sidewalk, then resume training. It takes time and energy to do that. They should not have to do that all the time.”
 
How can the military complain about having to work around something? We should be a little fearful for our safety if we have a military that has a hard time working around things and expending time and energy. We should also be worried that they are so eager to trample on laws that protect resources that are meant to be around long after all of us are gone.
 
The military is also concerned over the money it feels it is wasting on complying with our laws.
 
“The real issue is that it’s a hassle,” a former Defense Department employee told the L.A. Times. “The military is tired of spending money and having to comply with the law.”
 
Let’s pretend not to notice that the military is tired of having to comply with the law and focus on the fact that their budget request for this year was $396.1 billion. This is a $45.3 billion increase from 2002. A Council for a Livable World reports that “the increase alone is larger than the military budget of all other countries beside Japan, whose budget is $45.6 billion.”
 
So $396.1 billion is not enough to even clean up explosives and munitions the military may leave behind. $396.1 billion is not enough to drive military off-road vehicles around stream beds and tidal areas that are home to species we have already almost driven to extinction. $396.1 billion is not sufficient to pay damages to states if the military exposes toxic substances to our environment.
 
The attack on Sept.11 rocked our world. We all looked to a government that had just failed to provide us with security and comfort. Our government has chosen to exploit our fears at a time when dissent is interpreted as treason to further its own agenda. The military does not need and should not receive exemption from laws that will have an impact hundreds of years from now. The military should not be above the law. Its function is to diligently defend, not uselessly destroy.
 

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