The Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission, meeting yesterday in a hotel ballroom less than a mile from the Pentagon, endorsed most of the military's recommendations.
Posted on 08/25/2005 5:39:04 AM PDT by OESY
When then-House Republican backbencher Dick Armey came up with the concept of an independent base-closing commission in the mid-1980s, the idea was to make it easier for the political system to do the right thing...
As we're seeing in the current round of base closings, even the Armey method is having a hard time surviving the ability of Members to sabotage the process.... The Pentagon has proposed closing a record 62 major bases and 775 small installations to save $48.8 billion over 20 years and reposition the armed forces to face current threats....
Before the Brac Commission was even in existence, Mississippi Senator Trent Lott put a hold on the nomination of the chairman over fear that the panel would shut down the Pascagoula naval base. President Bush had to use recess appointments to name all nine members in April.
...Maine's Olympia Snowe took her revenge over Portsmouth's appearance on the Pentagon's list by blocking the nomination of Gordon England as Deputy Secretary of Defense. The commission gave Portsmouth a reprieve yesterday... it will only encourage more Senators to hold hostages, a la Ms. Snowe.
South Dakota's John Thune, who owes his job to Mr. Bush's support in 2004, showed his anger over Ellsworth Air Force Base's appearance on the list by announcing he would oppose John Bolton's nomination to the United Nations. The Brac Commission will make its Ellsworth call later this week. Senator John Warner of Virginia, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, is quoted in yesterday's Washington Post as saying the process was "rigged" to move 20,000 defense jobs from the Washington area. He accused Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and a senior aide of improperly manipulating the process. All of which shows that without Mr. Armey's invention, we'd never, ever close a base.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
I find it difficult to criticize Sen. Thune, an upcoming GOP star, who had to undertake a massive effort to save Ellsworth AFB, given his campaign platform. Some things weren't meant to not happen.
But, many of these bases can be converted into corporate or industrial parks, school campuses or residential communities (with the proper cleanup and landscaping) that will yield many more jobs and tax revenues than lost from a base closing. It takes some imagination, entrepreneurship, marketing and capital. This is a can-do nation of winners.
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God AND failing that... AND Fox News".) "
Yep. The purpose of these bases is to defend the United States. Economic advantages are just a byproduct. When the government starts keeping bases open because of the byproduct, harming the original purpose in the process, we have a problem. Military and budget considerations alone should dictate what bases we have and where they are located.
Good point. Is congressional consent required to “temporarily” move every unit to another facility? I suspect that there would be a lot of administrative difficulties to work through.
Actually the answer is right in front of their noses, as is evidenced by Brooks City Base. The city took over the base, maintenance and all, and now leases space to the Air Force. It has been a win-win situation for all, with hundreds of new businesses popping up in the area in the last few years that have created alot of jobs. However, we still ended up on the BRAC list, and the jobs created by these new businesses (which basically pay minimum wage)does not even compare to what will be lost. The most important loss will be to the Air Force, in "brain drain", as the majority of folks I talked to are not even considering moving to WPAFB, they are all jumping ship in one form or another, some going to NASA and for those that have the option, retirement.
Downsize the military to make it more efficient. Still more? In the middle of a war? And after GWB promised increases (pre War?). After Bill Clinton's ENORMOUS cuts already? Gimmee a break.
A lot of the cuts were just arbitrary, plain and simple, without regard to the strategic capability consequences. And since we are MORE dependent on the Reserves than ever before, it doesn't make sense to denude the "flyover country" of its bases where the Reserves report. Making them travel thousands of miles extra per year for their duty. Oh, that's "efficient". Rooooooight.
What is going on is not a quest for efficiency. It is dismantlement of capability. The evidence is there for all to see. The Republicans see that the Administration is in fact bent on gutting critical capabilities...with no good reason other than "the budget." Gee, weren't we supposed to be so freaking RICH after NAFTA....? The $20 billion trade surplus turned into a $90 billion deficit. These budgetary issues should not be happening... roooooiight.
Here is one major Republican assessment of the GWB-directed cuts in the Navy:
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Ignoring China's Growing Sub Force By Rob Simmons and Carlisle Trost August 21 2005 Capt. Shen Zhongchang, a strategist from the Chinese Navy Research Institute, predicted in 1996 that the most powerful naval weapon in future warfare would be submarines. Shen wrote: "After the First World War, the dominant vessel was the battleship. In the Second World War, it was the aircraft carrier. If another global war breaks out, the most powerful weapon will be the submarine." Since then, China has embarked on an aggressive buildup that will give it at least twice as many modern submarines as the United States by the next decade. The Department of Defense is ignoring China's subsurface strategy. In fact, it is moving in the opposite direction with two policy recommendations: a large-scale reduction in the fast-attack submarine force and the closure of the New London submarine base in Groton, the Navy's center of excellence for undersea warfare since its inception. The idea is to eliminate subs so that we don't need sub bases. The two are linked because the Navy cannot sustain an adequate submarine force without the piers and facilities in New London. Delivered to Congress two months before the Pentagon announced its base closure recommendations, the plan would reduce the submarine fleet by 21 percent, from 54 boats today to 41 or less in 2025. The cut is a drastic departure from the last dozen studies, the vast majority of which called for a future sub force of at least 55. The new plan contradicts our top war fighters' best judgment. Last month, the commander of the U.S. submarine force testified to Congress that the Navy requires 54 vessels now and into the future. Senior officers on the front line reject a smaller submarine force because the Navy is already unable to fulfill one-third of its missions - including those used to collect intelligence on terrorism and mass-destruction weapons. They understand that only a fraction of the submarine force can respond to crises at any time, and that foreign threats are growing exponentially. China is buying modern submarines by the dozen, with no less than 18 under construction today, about half in Russian shipyards. The U.S. Navy now buys just one submarine a year, a track that will leave the force in the 30s by 2025. The Defense Department's new submarine plan rests on an overly optimistic assessment - bad news because our intelligence community has consistently been surprised by China's military modernization program, most recently when Beijing launched an entire new class of submarines without our knowledge. The Navy office responsible for coordinating submarine force planning disagrees with such optimistic assumptions, but has been overruled. The Defense Department plan ignores the likelihood that future vessels will be cheaper as maturing technologies reduce the size and crews of attack submarines - critical points that defense leaders in Congress recently made to the BRAC Commission. The "silent service" is trying to tell the country that the Navy needs the facilities in Groton to support the leanest submarine fleet necessary to meet our national security requirements. We hope the BRAC Commission will listen. U.S. Rep. Rob Simmons, R-2nd District. represents the region containing the Groton submarine base. Adm. Carlisle Trost was chief of naval operations under the first Bush administration. COMMENT: Admiral Vern Clarke even admitted that with the closure of these bases that Wolfowitz had backhandedly ordered when the Budget Office told him to arbitrarily chop $45 billion out of the budget...that instead of just being cut to 41 boats...that if the build-rate is kept at current low levels or goes even lower as the OMB was hinting...while deployment tempo is kept up, then we likely could fall as low as 28 serviceable attack subs...of all makes...in 2025. |
You got that HALF right. Delete the "budget" considerations. MILITARY alone should dictate. Budget considerations by themselves, divorced from the strategic context would, in a civiilian democracy, would cause DOD prioritization to head for zero.
Consider that the domestic budget is allowed to spend $685 billion of pork for highway and bike-path projects to push through CAFTA, yet another job and economic drain from the U.S. base. Then, surprisingly up pops the those patriots at the OMB to dictate to Rumsfeld in December to have Wolfowitz arbitrarily "find" $45 billion in Defense cuts...after GWB had just run for re-election promising to increase spending...
Since the pork for CAFTA passage greatly exceeded GWB's expectations, by coincidentally $48 billion....we can see, magically, still more OMB pressure being put on the DOD to find "savings."
Think Dark
Don't close those military bases. We may need them someday soon.
Peggy Noonan. Opinion-Journal
Thursday, August 25, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT
The federal government is doing something right now that is exactly the opposite of what it should be doing. It is forgetting to think dark. It is forgetting to imagine the unimaginable.
Governments deal in data. People in government see a collection of data as something to be used, manipulated or ignored, but whatever they do with it, it's real. It's numbers on a page. You can point to them.
To think dark, on the other hand, takes imagination--and something more.
As adults living in the world, we know some things. As Murphy taught us, if it can go wrong, it will go wrong. As the journalist Harrison Salisbury said, in summing up what he'd learned in a lifetime observing history, "Expect the unexpected." As JFK taught us, "There's always some poor son of a bitch who doesn't get the word"--someone in the field who doesn't know what's going on and does exactly the wrong thing. As Ronald Reagan once said in conversation, man has never invented a weapon he didn't ultimately use. And as life has taught us since 9/11, we live in a dangerous age and the dangers aren't over, if they will ever be.
When you think dark, you're often and inescapably thinking with your gut, a vulgar way of referring to a certainty that lives somewhere between your spirit, soul and intellect. Your gut knows things your brain can't assert as fact because they're not facts, not yet. It can take guts to listen to your gut.
Right now the federal government is considering closing or consolidating hundreds of military bases throughout the U.S. A government commission is meeting this week to vote on specific base-closing proposals in the Pentagon's plan. Yesterday they voted to close big bases like Fort Monmouth, N.J., and Fort Gillem, Ga. (They voted to save the naval base in Groton, Conn.)
The Pentagon says this huge and historic base-closing plan will save $50 billion over the next two decades. They may be right. But it's a bad plan anyway, a bad idea, and exactly the wrong thing to do in terms of future and highly possible needs.
The Pentagon has some obvious logic on its side--we have a lot of bases, and they cost a lot of money--and numbers on paper. They have put forward their numbers on savings, redundancies, location and obsolescence.
But they're wrong. What they ought to do, and what the commission reviewing the Pentagon's plan ought to do, is sit down and think dark.
In the rough future our country faces, bad things will happen. We all know this. It's hard to imagine some of those things on a beautiful day with the sun shining and the markets full, but let's imagine anyway.
Among the things we may face over the next decade, as we all know, is another terrorist attack on American soil. But let's imagine the next one has many targets, is brilliantly planned and coordinated. Imagine that there are already 100 serious terror cells in the U.S., two per state. The members of each cell have been coming over, many but not all crossing our borders, for five years. They're working jobs, living lives, quietly planning.
Imagine they're planning that on the same day in the not-so-distant future, they will set off nuclear suitcase bombs in six American cities, including Washington, which will take the heaviest hit. Hundreds of thousands may die; millions will be endangered. Lines will go down, and to make it worse the terrorists will at the same time execute the cyberattack of all cyberattacks, causing massive communications failure and confusion. There will be no electricity; switching and generating stations will also have been targeted. There will be no word from Washington; the extent of the national damage will be as unknown as the extent of local damage is clear. Daily living will become very difficult, and for months--food shortages, fuel shortages.
Let's make it worse. On top of all that, on the day of the suitcase nukings, a half dozen designated cells will rise up and assassinate national, state and local leaders. There will be chaos, disorder, widespread want; law-enforcement personnel, or what remains of them, will be overwhelmed and outmatched.
Impossibly grim? No, just grim. Novelistic? Sure. But if you'd been a novelist on Sept. 10, 2001, and dreamed up a plot in which two huge skyscrapers were leveled, the Pentagon was hit, and the wife of the solicitor general of the United States was desperately phoning him from a commercial jet that had been turned into a missile, you would have been writing something wild and improbable that nonetheless happened a day later.
And all this of course is just one scenario. The madman who runs North Korea could launch a missile attack on the United States tomorrow, etc. There are limitless possibilities for terrible trouble.
So we are imagining America being forced to fight for its survival on its streets. How does this get us to base closings? On the day the big terrible thing happens there will of course be shock and chaos. People will feel the need for protection--for the feeling of protection and for the thing itself. They will want and need American troops nearby and they will want and need American military bases up and operating to help maintain some semblance of order. The very presence, the very fact of these bases will help in the big recovery.
That's what all these bases are going to be needed for. To help us survive a very bad time.
We don't need these bases for sentimental reasons. We don't need them because local congressmen want the jobs and money they provide. We don't need them because we must never change the structure and operations of our defense system. We need them because someday they may very well help us survive as a nation. Seems worth the price, doesn't it?
This of course is pure guessing on my part. I can't prove it with data. My gut says that when things turn dark, we will need all the help we can get.
It's easy to say, "Oh, if we think in such an apocalyptic fashion, the bad guys have already won." But that's not a thought, it's a slogan. Think dark and you're prepared for darkness, and preparation will be half the battle.
Each day each of us should--must--move forward individually with hope, faith and optimism. Why not? Life is good and God is real. But in terms of public policy we should make our plans based on the assumption that thinking dark is thinking safe.
Because if it can go wrong it will go wrong, because man has never invented a weapon he did not ultimately use, and because the beginning of wisdom is to expect the unexpected.
President Bush and Congress are to review and either accept or reject the final Pentagon/commission plan in November. They should reject it. Leave it where it is. Think dark.
COMMENT: Here is an interesting tidbit from my news service that allows one to see there is more fire than smoke to Noonan's dark suppositions:
The New Trojan War Defense Department Finds Its Networks Under Attack From China
First In A Two-Part Series
(Federal Computer Week, August 22, 2005, Pg. 60)
Top U.S. military cyberwarriors say that adversaries probe Defense Department computers within minutes of the systems' coming online. Retired Army officers and industry officials say Chinese hackers are the primary culprits. They describe the Pentagon's computer network defense strategy as a battle of attrition in which neither side has an advantage.
Thanks for the ping!
The Left's real position will come out then, as intimated here by their mouthpiece, the Los Angeles Times, citing a Brown Univ. study:
Base Benefits Don't Add Up
Catherine Lutz
(Los Angeles Times, August 25, 2005)
A Brown University anthropology professor and author of "Homefront: A Military City and the American 20th Century" questions the prevailing assumption that military bases bring economic benefits to their surrounding communities. The balance sheet tips the other way when factors such lost property taxes, increased costs of providing social services to military families, environmental damage and the mostly low-paying retail jobs on bases are taken into account.
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