"No war for oil" is a common chant among demonstrators against the US war in Iraq. In the March 10 issue of The American Conservative, Robert Bryce turns the phrase around, illuminating how much oil is used for war. It turns out that to the extent that the US invaded Iraq to secure oil supplies, it was an ultimately self-defeating proposition. The military uses so much oil in fighting the war, and the war costs so much, that the US is squandering opportunities secure oil supplies through economic means or to reduce our dependence on oil.

In his article in The American Conservative, Bryce points out,

the average American G.I. in Iraq uses about 20.5 gallons of fuel every day, more than double the daily volume consumed by U.S. soldiers in Iraq in 2004... And nearly every drop of that fuel is imported into Iraq. These massive fuel requirements--just over 3 million gallons per day ...--are a key reason for the soaring cost of the war effort.

The logistics of importing all this fuel into a war zone are staggering. Bryce reports that "about 5,500 tanker trucks" are used to haul the fuel into Iraq, and the delivery costs for each gallon fuel for the US military in Iraq are $42--$42 per gallon!--and that is only delivery; it doesn't even include the cost of the fuel. Bryce calculates that fuel imports alone amount to one-third of all U.S. military expenditures in Iraq.

Outside of Iraq, what about the oil budget for the entire US military?
Author and Hampshire College professor of Peace and World Security Studies Michael Klare wrote in an article at the web site TomDispatch.com last summer,

for every soldier stationed "in theater," there are two more in transit, in training, or otherwise in line for eventual deployment to the war zone -- soldiers who also consume enormous amounts of oil... Moreover, to sustain an "expeditionary" army located halfway around the world, the Department of Defense must move millions of tons of arms, ammunition, food, fuel, and equipment every year by plane or ship, consuming additional tanker-loads of petroleum... the Department of Defense (DoD) is, in fact, the world's leading consumer of petroleum... An April 2007 report by a defense contractor, LMI Government Consulting, suggests that the Pentagon might consume as much as...14 million gallons every day. This is greater than the total national consumption of Sweden or Switzerland.

In his American Conservative article, Robert Bryce concludes that the prime danger to the US of this heavy Pentagon oil use is that, while the US is bogged down fighting and trying to pay for a war in Iraq, China and Russia are securing oil and other resources throughout the world through economic means. Bryce contends, "In today's multi-polar world, economic interests, not military force, predominate." Bryce quotes a retired Marine Corps colonel, G.I. Wilson, who has written much on terrorism and was stationed in Iraq for 15 months: "It used to be that the side with the most guns would win," says Wilson. "Today, with the most guns goes bankrupt."

Michael Klare is less concerned with the economic costs as with the danger that an oil-hungry military may soon be fighting wars primarily to maintain its own access to oil. Begin with the presumption that world oil production has peaked already, or will be peaking and starting its long-term decline soon. Add the Bush-Rumsfeld strategy of transforming the military to a high-tech, fuel-hungry machine, and add to that the Bush-Cheney-McCain doctrine of invading countries that pose no immediate threat to the US, because someday, they might threaten us. Pentagon contractor LMI Government Consulting has examined this dynamic, according to Klare, and concludes that it just ain't going to work. Or, as the military contractor puts it in their report, "it may not be possible to execute operational concepts and capabilities to achieve our security strategy if the energy implications are not considered." When they do consider the energy implications, LMI concludes that the strategy appears "unsustainable."

So... An article in The American Conservative decries the cost of the Iraq war, says fuel costs are a major reason for the high cost, and warns that in today's world, "the side with the most guns goes bankrupt." A Pentagon contractor warns that US global military strategy is "unsustainable" because of the world's precarious energy supplies.

Aren't those alone good reasons to drastically cut military spending and start aggressively using our money to reduce our need for oil?