Some days, it seems like the U.S. military juggernaut is at war with the entire planet. And it is. Literally.

The horrors of the Middle East have captured people's attentions for the last month, and the US response has been seen in our news largely in terms not only of the Bush Administration's desire to invade Iraq, but the potential diplomatic damage to US aspirations for a global military empire. TV newscasts invariably focus on some guy with good posture, standing at a podium, government seal and flag behind him, gravely intoning that the peasants are revolting.

Meanwhile, to the thundering disinterest of the networks, this month an outstanding public interest group called the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) leaked a draft bill, now in circulation among congressional committees, that would give the Department of Defense wide-ranging exemptions from America's environmental laws. According to PEER, under the draft bill, "bombing ranges, air bases, and training grounds would not be subject to key protections contained within the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Marine Mammal Protection Act, Noise Control Act, Migratory Bird Treat Act, or the Endangered Species Act."

Chalk this up as another piece of handiwork long wanted by right wing extremists--this time in the Pentagon--that is suddenly "doable" in Congress after 9-11. The argument, now made with a straight face in each of the armed services and in carefully stacked expert committees across Beltwayland, is that protecting habitat, groundwater, air, and even soldiers from degradation and toxic exposures interferes with military "readiness." A Pentagon official testified before a House Armed Services subcommittee hearing last month that for starters, the DoD would seek legislation in the 2003 Defense Authorization Act to shield their operations from compliance with anti-pollution and wildlife protection statutes.

Never mind that almost all of the environmental laws named already contain perfectly adequate exceptions for military activity. The problem isn't that our environmental laws have interfered or will interfere with the Pentagon's wars on people and buildings; for that matter, they haven't interfered all that much with the Pentagon's wars on the planet, either. Our military is already the country's largest and least accountable polluter. War, of course, besides being bad for children, is also bad for other living things, and one nuclear bunker-buster (especially when followed by a few bazillion more) can ruin your whole biosphere. But even the more common sorts of turkey shoots waged by the US military tend to be ecological disasters--remember the Kuwaiti oil fires?--and on a smaller scale, our armed forces are notorious for making messes on their land, and for refusing to clean them up. It's not all that surprising; an institution whose raison d'etre is dominance isn't about to mitigate its destruction just because the victims can't fight back. Anything from rare plants to endangered birds and small mammals to Afghan civilians can attest to that.

No, the problem for DoD advocates of this bill is that there are environmental laws at all; and to the bill's creators, and their allies in Congress and in the Bush Administration, the very existence of environmental laws is offensive.

Soon, no doubt, we'll hear that they are treasonous, by virtue of impeding "readiness." Nature casts its lot with the terrorists, and everything, even the yellow-bellied gnatthwacker, is either with us or against us.

Why does it matter, given the number of Superfund sites and other enviro-catastrophes already on Department of Defense land? (Let's not even get into the Department of Energy, whose nuclear facilities at places like Hanford, Rocky Flats, and Savannah River rank among the Western Hemisphere's worst ongoing environmental disasters.) Despite our military's tendency to discount environmental protection as something sissies do, the military remains one of the country's largest land owners, and some of that land has become important wildlife habitat. That's particularly true for bases near large urban areas, where acres set aside for buffer or training exercises comprise some of the last oases from encroaching sprawl. Given a choice between suburbia and a wild place, most critters head for the wild place--even if the place gets shot or blown up every now and then.

The DoD's drive to exempt itself from the nation's green laws is purely ideological, with no particular complaint beyond the usual conservative carp that such laws prevent a landowner (in this case, the DoD) from doing what it wants wherever it wants. It does not seem to have occurred to these patriots that soldiers can drink fouled water or get exposed to toxic waste, too. (No terrorist can cut down a buff leatherneck in his prime faster than, say, leukemia.)

But you can be sure our patriots have calculated that if the military can be exempted from laws protecting the planet for no particular reason, then so can any new landowner that buys the surplus military land in a few years. Or, why not exempt other federal lands, too, like, say, the national park system?

And what's good enough to protect the military (or our national parks) fer darn sure ought to be a fine standard for the rest of our country. It's a boot in the door.

As you'll note, the desire to let the market decide what air we breathe or water we drink, a strategy George W. Bush already applied with great success in Texas, has made the need for some hippie holiday like Earth Day just about obsolete there. Ask the folks who breathe the air in Houston.

Remind them to chew that air thoroughly before they swallow. And toast them with some bottled drinking water. Soon, for the yellow-bellied gnatthwacker, it'll be An Army Of One.