If you wondered why our air campaign against ISIS was inept, consider the statement by Mike Morell, speaking on the “Charlie Rose” program Tuesday night that we didn’t take out the oil facilities that ISIS was using to become the best financed terrorist organization in history because of our concern the environment would be harmed. As the Washington Times reported:

One may be thankful that President Harry S. Truman didn’t have to file an environmental impact statement before he dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, acts which shortened and won World War II and saved hundreds of thousands of lives.

A former CIA director said the U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State has been reluctant to attack oil wells controlled by the extremist group partly because of environmental concerns. We didn’t go after oil wells -- actually hitting oil wells that ISIS controls because we didn’t want to do environmental damage, and we didn’t want to destroy that infrastructure,” said former spy chief Michael Morell, using an acronym for the Islamic State.

So much for the campaign to “degrade and destroy” ISIS, giving credence to the adage that there is no specific and credible evidence of intelligence in the White House. You win wars by breaking things and killing the enemy and letting the sea levels take care of themselves. You don’t win by worrying that destroying an enemy’s infrastructure might melt a glacier in a hundred years.

Our delusional president has embraced the line that climate change is our greatest national security threat and perhaps even the line that global warming has affected the Middle East’s climate to the point where ISIS was moved to behead, rape, and make war on their neighbors. ISIS, President Obama believes that ISIS is a direct response to our carbon footprint.

President Obama, who refused to march with otherworld leaders in Paris after the Charlie Hebdo attack earlier this year, no doubt shook ISIS to its foundation when the President declared, The Hill reports, after the most recent Paris attacks:

“Next week, I will be joining President Hollande and world leaders in Paris for the global climate conference,” Obama said during his prepared remarks, which focused mostly on the efforts to fight the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). “What a powerful rebuke to the terrorists it will be, when the world stands as one and shows that we will not be deterred from building a better future for our children,” he added.

What? Does he seriously believe that participating in a gabfest the goal of which is to do great damage to our economy to reduce global temperatures by an immeasurable fraction is a defeat for ISIS. They are laughing all the way to the explosive vest factory -- and the bank they put their oil revenues in.

How much fossil fuel will Air Force One consume as he journeys to the climate confab and back? The Washington Times recently noted the environmental cost of President Obama’s April 21, 2015 Earth Day trip:

Earth Day could be interesting in Florida: President Obama will journey aboard Air Force to visit the Everglades on Wednesday, burning jet fuel and taxpayer funds as he goes. Well, at least it’s not as far as Tokyo, which was his Earth Day destination last year. That venture prompted the London Daily Mail to do the math and reveal that magnificent but pricey aircraft consumes 5 gallons of jet fuel for every mile it flies -- emitting over 21 pounds of dreaded CO2 per gallon. The fuel alone costs taxpayers about $180,000 per hour of flight time. Oh, the carbon footprint -- and the irony.

President Obama wants to use the environment to degrade and destroy the U.S. economy based on ideology and not science – much pain for no gain. As Investor’s Business Daily noted:

As Patrick J. Michaels of the Cato Institute noted in a National Review article, "The EPA's own model, ironically acronymed MAGICC, estimates that its new policies will prevent a grand total of 0.018 degrees Celsius in warming by 2100... In fact, dropping the carbon dioxide emissions from all sources of electrical generation to zero would reduce warming by a grand total of 0.04 degrees Celsius by 2100." That is an amount too small to either measure or sacrifice our economic growth for -- even if the president's policies achieve it. For this almost imaginary gain, much pain will be inflicted. A Heritage Foundation study predicts U.S. manufacturing job losses totaling 586,000 in just the first seven years of the Clean Power Plan. States with large manufacturing bases and heavy reliance on coal, such as Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin, would each lose at least 20,000 jobs. The Heritage study projects that the plan will also result in "a loss of more than $2.5 trillion (inflation-adjusted) in aggregate gross domestic product and a total income loss of more than $7,000 (inflation-adjusted) per person." Put that lump of coal in your stocking.

President Obama would destroy the American economy to fight the mythical threat of climate change but protected the oil wealth of the very real and very deadly threat of ISIS because destroying it might hurt the environment. Go to your climate conference, Mr. President. That’ll show them

Daniel John Sobieski is a freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor’s Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.