Base Closings Leave Northeast "Virtually Abandoned"
Commission to Review Base Closings Plan
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050823/...tkBHNlYwM3MTg-
(Gold9472: Yeah, I'd have to say that's something I don't agree with.)
By JEFF DONN, Associated Press Writer 13 minutes ago
BOSTON - The military may save money with deep cuts at Northeastern bases, critics say, but that would probably come at a cost — an erosion of public support in the region where Americans first took up arms for their new country 230 years ago.
A national commission starts final review Wednesday on a plan that could erase 12 percent of jobs at bases across the region, according to a tally by The Associated Press.
If adopted as proposed, the cuts would more deeply stamp America's army as an institution of the South and Midwest — and not of the Northeast, say some analysts and community leaders. They predict weaker backing in wartime, fewer recruits, and strained contractor relations across the region.
"We're quickly moving to the point where we will have no military bases in the Northeast, and this undermines support for the military," said U.S. Rep. Rob Simmons, R-Conn., who was an Army reservist for 33 years. "We are a nation of citizen soldiers."
In Arlington, Va., the nine-member Base Realignment and Closure Commission will consider closing or trimming 62 of the largest bases and hundreds of smaller sites in proposals initially laid out by the Pentagon. President Bush and Congress each exercise veto power over the final plan.
In previous rounds of trimming since 1988, about a fifth of the major cuts struck the Northeast once they filtered through civilian review, according to a 2002 report by the U.S. General Accounting Office. That showed a kind of demographic equity, since about a fifth of the nation lives in the Northeast.
This time, the Pentagon would shift that balance radically. It proposed slicing 21,151 Northeastern jobs — 12 percent of the region's remaining defense and civilian personnel at military bases, Defense Department studies indicate.
That would be three-quarters of the regional cuts. The Midwest would shed the rest, while 21,598 jobs would go to the South and West.
"It is national security that we're talking about here, and you need national support," said Glen Browder, a former Alabama congressman who teaches civilian-military relations at the Naval Postgraduate School. The school in Monterey, Calif., is itself on the list of possible closings.
The Pentagon and many other employers have followed the tug of more plentiful land, cheaper prices and sunnier skies in the South and West for decades. The Pentagon defends its latest plan on the basis of military value and savings; it estimates its plan would save almost $50 billion over 20 years.
However, several politicians and members of the review commission have hinted that the Pentagon's cuts need more geographical balance. Commission Chairman Anthony Principi has said the military would be "virtually abandoning" the Northeast.
Analysts generally reject any theory that the Republican administration is taking revenge on the heavily Democratic Northeast for voting for John Kerry in the last presidential election. "I don't see any malicious political intent here — just myopia and shortsightedness," said Richard Kohn, a military historian at the University of North Carolina.
However, some worry that the base shift would magnify a tendency toward more public and political backing for the military in the South and West and less in the Northeast.
"The sources of support for the military are becoming concentrated in a handful of regions," said Loren Thompson, a security expert at the Lexington Institute think tank in Arlington, Va. "That suggests in the future less broad-based political support for the armed forces."
The institute is named for the site of the first Revolutionary War battle, where a small band of civilian militiamen, warned by Paul Revere, challenged a larger force of British regulars. They came to be called Minutemen, because they could rally so quickly to the nation's defense.
These days, military recruiters fear that an out-of-sight army will be out of mind for many Northeasterners. Maj. General John Libby, who heads the National Guard in Maine, said the bunching of bases in the South "just removes from our culture and society of the Northeast the military presence — and therefore the inclination to military service."
Fewer Northeasterners will forge personal connections with the military through relatives or personal experience, the specialists say. John Pike, director of Globalsecurity.org., recalled clambering over Army tanks as a child at a museum not far from his home at Fort Knox, Ky.
"If the only soldier you've ever seen has been on TV, I think you'd think of the military as something alien," he said.
Defense specialists also warn of estrangement between the military and its Northeast contractors, who are often based at prominent nearby universities or businesses with long experience. More than 2,000 local companies do business with Submarine Base New London, in Groton, Conn., which is targeted to close with its 8,460 jobs in the state hardest hit by the Pentagon's plan.
"So we have a culture — and one could say it's an advanced form of maritime culture — that we've had here in New England for a couple hundred years," said Tony Sheridan, president of the area's Chamber of Commerce.
Nuclear submarine maker Electric Boat, also in Groton, sends about 500 workers to the base as part of a broader company team that helps design, build, and fix the undersea fleet. The Pentagon wants to run the fleet instead from two Southern bases.
"It would take many years to reconstitute it, even if they could ever bring it to the level that exists today," said Electric Boat spokesman Neil Ruenzel.
Electric Boat sold its first submarine to the Navy, after all, way back in 1900.
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EDITOR'S NOTE — Jeff Donn is the AP's Boston-based Northeast regional reporter.
