Letters to the Editor
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"Permanent " Bases
I have no doubt the reality-challenged Bush administration would think they could occupy permanent bases in Iraq indefinetly, or at least until they leave office. In doing so, it's realistic to think the numbers of US forces based there would never drop much below 100,000, with about one third, or roughly one infantry division and an air wing, being "combat troops." The rest would qualify as "support."
Our military legacy has historically held a different view of permanence than journalists, though. We built similar "permanent" bases in Vietnam, complete with the pizza parlors, beer halls, PX complexes, exotic electronics, artillery batteries set in concrete and enormous airfields and wrote them off without batting an eye when our mission irredeemably collapsed. Some of these were home to brigade-sized units (aprx 3000 men) that were supposed to be able to function out of a small truck, and much of it was built to create a more "appealing" environment for those unfortunate enough to be there. We have built similar bases in Kuwait and wanted to do the same in Saudi Arabia, but had to settle for borrowed facilities there due to extremely limited tolerance to our presence: US troops there lived and worked in, what was for all practical purposes, prison compounds, complete with barbed wire to keep the inmates in, not the bad guys out.
Lesson learned here is cost is no indicator of permanence. It's all part of the same enormous waste.
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The original motivation?
Thank heaven if this story finally gets legs. It's been the elephant in the room for far too long. And probably the real answer to the unasked question, "Why did we *really* go to Iraq?" That, of course, all of Bush's excuses are meant to avoid.
As such, too, it's probably the deepest answer to "Why are the Iraqis so pissed off and distrustful of us?" *They* know the constructions been going on, to the extent that our media has not acknowledged.
It's interesting to recall that Kerry pointedly disavowed this goal in the first presidential debate. He looked right into the camera, in one of his most assertive moments in the whole performance, and insisted he would seek no permanent military presence. He knew what this was about, for both the American and Iraqi peoples.
Please heaven let this story get more legs.
jTh
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Vietnam Redux: Permanent Bases and a Foreign Policy Based Upon Permanent Delusions
I served in Vietnam as a medical corpsman and was stationed at Cam Ranh Bay Air Base, or as we referred to it: scenic Cam Ranh Bay, where the sewer mets the sea. It was virtually an American city amid the rolling sand dunes of that peninsula jutting into the South China Sea, complete with all the amenities of an average American city back in the world except for the brothels and drug dealers, which were conveniently located nearby in the Vietnamese fishing village on the bay. As we used to say at the hospital: if the world needs an enema, I know where to shove the tube.
But all the money used to construct the base was a huge waste when the North Vietnamese Army rolled into Saigon with their Soviet tanks after the South Vietnamese Army collapsed. So after spending what amounted to around $650 billion dollars, slaughtering between 3 to 3.4 million Vietnamese and around 58,000 American soldiers, according to Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, and destabilizing neighboring Cambodia where the Khmer Rouge regime committed genocide against its own citizens, the grand messanic dream of exporting American democracy to a far distant foreign shore now looks like a feverish nightmare from one of George Orwell's political satires. Of course I thought that no American president would ever make the same political blunder. And as usual I was wrong. But doesn't Gore Vidal refer to this country as The United States of Amnesia?
I see a similar manifestation of American hubris in the Bush administration's construction of four permanent bases in Iraq that harken back to the American experience in Vietnam. The military contractors, who built these bases and probably are large donators to the Republican Party's election war chest, have made tons of money off their construction. So they have served a specific benefit to a very small and exclusive minority of American citizens, Republican democracy in action.
When the newly elected Iraqi politicians, the majority being religious Shiites form a government, they could demand that the American military forces leave their country. And we would have to honor their demands, since they have that sovereign right as a nation. I don't think that they would allow these bases to launch air atrikes against fellow Shiites in Iran in pre-emptive strikes against the Iranian nuclear facilities. That is, unless Paul Bremmer, the vice-roy of American neo-imperialism, signed an agreement with the interim government to keep these bases for a specific number of years, which is always a possibility given the way the Bush administration operates in diplomatic secrecy. But would the leaders of the elected government have to honor such a previous committment?
The real tragedy or comedy, depending upon your point of view, is that the Boy Emperor still has enough time left in his tenure to further destabilize the region and the world. Who would have ever thought that the photograph of young Vietnamese women with boutiques of flowers greeting Marines wading ashore on China Beach in DaNang from amphibious assault crafts would be replaced by American diplomats fleeing for their lives on helicopters taking off of from the landing pad on top of the American Embassy in Saigon? But such is the nature of American hubris from which nightmares are made. As Betty Davis said in the movie, All About Eve: "Fasten your seat belts. You're in for a bumpy ride."
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taxes wasted
As I get ready for the upcoming tax season, I have lamented about how my hard-earned dollars are going to pay for the war in Iraq...that I and millions protested against. Now I know some of the specific uses of the war dollars. The descriptions of these bases were horrifying. Others should know about the specifics. Readers of "Permanent Bases", please write a letter to the editor of your nearby paper so that others can know about this.