CLARK FOLLOWS CARTER ON BASES

I’m not sure I entirely buy my friend Phil Carter’s argu­ment against the lat­est round of base clo­sures — that it will widen “today’s civil-​​military divide.” Isn’t the Pentagon’s first goal is to pro­tect civil­ians, not play nice with them? And wouldn’t that job be bet­ter han­dled from fewer, more inte­grated bases, with less over­lap?
But, either way, it sure was inter­est­ing to see General Wesley Clark make almost the same case, a day after Captain Carter pre­sented his.
Here’s Phil…

This clo­sure will change the rela­tion­ship between the U.S. mil­i­tary and the soci­ety from which it’s drawn. Many of these reserve cen­ters, armories, and defense offices play an impor­tant role in their com­mu­ni­ties’ lives­re­serve armories fre­quently serve as local meet­ing halls and polling places, and reserve units often engage in com­mu­nity ser­vice projects, for exam­ple. When these bases go away, so too will the pres­ence of the mil­i­tary in the lives of the peo­ple who reside and work near them. Initially, reservists may drive hours to drill with units at the new con­sol­i­dated armory loca­tions, but even­tu­ally these reservists will move nearer the big bases or quit the reserves. Either way, com­mu­ni­ties that today con­tribute reservists to the mil­i­tary will no longer do so.

And here’s Wes, via the AP…

Retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark said Saturday that the Pentagon’s plan to close mil­i­tary bases around the coun­try and reor­ga­nize troops will iso­late the mil­i­tary from the American peo­ple and the rest of the world.
Clark said the plan to pull U.S. forces back home from abroad and cen­tral­ize bases takes jobs away from smaller towns.
“We’re los­ing influ­ence abroad when we bring those troops home, and we lose the inter­ac­tion with America when we cre­ate these super bases,” Clark said.

Maybe. But the greater dan­ger, it seems to me, is to home­land defense. As Phil writes, the Pentagon’s plans to shut down more than 200 national guard armories “may under­mine home­land secu­rity efforts, which rely in part on the geo­graphic dis­per­sion and avail­abil­ity of reserve units to respond to domes­tic emer­gen­cies. Local gov­ern­ments depend on reserve cen­ters for use as stag­ing areas and tem­po­rary shel­ters in their emer­gency plans.“
THERE’S MORE: Robin Burk has a smart look at the Army’s ratio­nale for con­sol­i­da­tion.

May 16th, 2005 | Money Money Money | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.