OPINION:
America’s commander in chief just laid another egg.
President Biden wants all Pentagon vehicles to be electric by 2030 — in just six years and seven months. America’s fearless leader previewed this policy on Earth Day 2022.
“We’re going to start the process where every vehicle in the United States military, every vehicle, is going to be climate-friendly — every vehicle,” Mr. Biden said in Seattle that April 22. “I mean it.”
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm just reiterated this objective.
Sen. Joni Ernst, Iowa Republican, asked Ms. Granholm at an April 26 Armed Services Committee hearing, “Do you support the military adopting that EV fleet by 2030?”
“I do, and I think we can get there,” Ms. Granholm replied.
Those who have worn America’s uniform find this jaw-droppingly stupid.
“Anyone who has even a little experience in military logistics recognizes Joe Biden’s EV mandate as a political farce,” House Armed Services Committee member Jim Banks, Indiana Republican, told me. The Navy Reserve officer and U.S. Senate candidate added: “As an Afghanistan war veteran, I wish Biden DOD’s top brass had the courage to put our national security before Green New Deal fantasies and call out this harmful and ridiculous order.”
“I encountered a lot of IEDs [improvised explosive devices] on dirt roads in Afghanistan, but no charging stations,” said Matt Pottinger, who served three combat deployments as a Marine and later as deputy national security adviser. “We rely on China for most of our EV supply chain, and that trend is worsening. It was hard enough when we depended on Middle Eastern allies for our energy needs. To put those needs — even for our military — in the hands of our chief adversary is, to use a technical term, pretty dumb.”
Mr. Biden’s pretty dumb political farce raises numerous unintentionally hilarious questions:
Where exactly would one plug in a Jeep, truck, tank or armored personnel carrier in a blistering desert or steamy jungle?
If such charging stations existed, wouldn’t the enemy neutralize them, to hobble U.S. armed forces?
If American GIs discovered functioning charging stations, would they halt their advance for, say, 30 to 45 minutes to recharge — at least once or twice a day?
Would U.S. soldiers bring travel adapters to plug their EVs into overseas charging stations?
How would the Allied march from D-Day to Berlin have looked if George S. Patton, Maxwell Taylor, Bernard Law Montgomery and other commanders had relied on electric vehicles? Would Hitler have left charging stations conveniently connected to the grid and ready for the 3rd Army to refresh their Sherman tanks en route to the Battle of the Bulge? Or, more likely, would der Fuhrer have ordered SS saboteurs to dynamite every one of those damn things as the Nazis retreated, from Burgundy to Bastogne?
Alternatively, Patton and his men could have hauled mobile, solar-powered charging stations, so tanks and other vehicles could boost their voltage while dodging incoming Wehrmacht artillery.
Allied troops would have also confronted, in Monty Python’s words, “a teensy problemette.”
The skies above the Battle of the Bulge were notoriously dark and overcast in December 1944. The clouds were so thick that Allied pilots could not parachute supplies to friendly forces who were invisible beneath the dense gray.
Theoretically, had Patton roared into Nazi-occupied Belgium under an EV mandate, tapping into a “woke,” solar-powered grid would have been useless. There and then, particularly around the winter solstice, Sun rays were as scarce as synagogues.
Obviously, 2023 is not 1944. That said, relying on the enemy’s green infrastructure or schlepping solar- and wind-power generators would cripple U..S troops as they attacked hostile combatants.
So, what’s next from the geniuses at Mr. Biden’s Green New Pentagon and the Department of Energy, the guardians of America’s nuclear arsenal?
Why not an electric-ship mandate?
Navy aircraft carriers could stop every two days in mid-ocean, plug into solar-powered buoys, wait 12 hours, and then go on their merry way.
Why?
Climate!
• Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News contributor.
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