Posted on 06/08/2012 10:36:57 PM PDT by LibWhacker
With the U.S. moving the majority of its naval fleet to the Pacific, commanders are eagerly looking for invitations to park the planes and ships that will be pouring into the region.
Travis Tritten at Stars and Stripes reports that the Pentagon has apparently been fanning the old flame of friendship with the Philippines and will be re-opening two bases it left in 1991 — Subic Bay and Clark Air Base.
The U.S. had a falling out with the island nation in the early nineties and pulled out of the bases, which were then built-up by a series of private developers and builders. How useful what's left is a matter of debate, but the locations used to be major centers of operation for American forces in the Pacific.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Make ‘em sign a treaty giving us the rights to the bases for 100 years.
Wouldn’t matter. The territory/property is theirs, so they can tear up the lease whenever they want.
Outstanding. Ths will allow to spread out our forces and be able to have better overall tactics in the Pacific RIM area.
I was in the Navy at the time. I remember the stories of protesters all over the place with signs, “Bad USA, go home!!” We did, and took our money with us. Be careful what you wish for. Same goes for the numbnut liberals that are always wishing for Hill AFB, Utah to be closed. If you want your local economy to forgo $5 billion per year, you better be thinking about that real careful-like.
Pinatubo was a severe danger to the personnel remaining at Clark AFB. I read an interesting book written by the vulcanologists who lived and were advising there in the last chaotic days. Unfortunately, I could not find the title on Google. However, a book Ash Warriors (not the complete title, but too lazy to go back and look) by Anderegg, the commander is on line for reading. There is a detailed link at Wikipedia.
As to our reasons for increasing our presence. It is part of an overall strategy to increase our visibility and presence in the Pacific region to counter Chinese expansionist activities. Chinese are heavily engaged in Africa, importing large amounts of raw material from many island nations and Australia. China has 1.3 to 1.5 billion people all of whom want to become at lease middle class. That requires a lot of resources.
Going from memory, I think we left because the Philipinos were being ungrateful, anti-American douchebags, demanding that we get our dirty military off their land.
As we were leaving, Mt. Pinatubo erupted burying the base that was newly theirs in ash.
They didn't know we had that technology.
My take: Zero is setting up WWIII to be a “fair fight,” by sacrificing the Pacific Fleet in a manner much the same as Pearl Harbor, only this time it’s aircraft carriers instead of battle ships.
The only thing that might work would be to permanently sell the US an island, and irrevocably cede sovereignty over it to the US. Even then, there would eventually be pressure to give it back, like we did with the Panama Canal.
Another possibility would be to lease the area, and instead of us building upon the area, have their government pay for building the facilities, which we then lease back. Rig things so that they face unacceptably-high income losses if they ever kick us out.
You're so right. It's scary that it's so few running what, 6 billion now? We the sheeple... And worse that the elites think there are too many of us (not our personal fault) and are using eradication and "insecticide" type programs on the people.
Is that any different than Gitmo?
As was Havana in the 1950’s.
Country Inn, Buffalo Bar, Bamboo Grove, Scotty’s.
Actually, the Philippino Senate wanted us out, the Aquino government wanted us to stay.
To be specific, it was the Senate that didn’t want us, the Aquino government was willing to let us stay.
The US has largely screwed over the Filipinos since 1898. We had most of our Army there in the early 1900’s killing Filipinos. How many Filipinos were killed at the hands of the Japanese in the forties for trying to help Americans? Would it not have been better to bury our fear of being labeled “Colonists” and administer the Philippines as a trust territory or even a state? We treated them much as we did our Vietnamese allies: we abandoned them when as soon as it became too uncomfortable for us. I found both peoples to be good decent folks for the most part, just as any other society.
Public works lumpia and cold San Miguel.....
Yumm
The cubi O club is ondisay in pCola and can be moved back
I remember back when a lot of Filipino pols were clamoring for the US to get out. One of our guys asked if they really, really, wanted to see the Imperial Japanese Navy once again sailing through the Suriago Straits. (Crickets.)
The people who worked on there were totally pist at their pols when the bases closed as they had some of the best jobs in the islands.
I'm also wondering who gets the contracts to rebuild the bases? Sounds like a plum deal worth plenty of "baksheesh".
That’s what I thought too. I thought they wanted us to stay so we could conduct a humanitarian mission, but we compied with their first wish......leaving.
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