KITTERY, Maine — Senators from Maine and New Hampshire are blasting a request by the Obama administration for Congress to authorize an additional round of base closings.
A joint statement by Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine and Jeanne Shaheen and Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire says another round of base closings doesn’t make sense, either from a defense perspective or from a dollars and cents perspective.
They said Thursday that the 2005 base closings are just now being completed, and they said it’s already clear that costs were greater than projected and savings were lower than projected.
Portsmouth Naval Shipyard was spared in the last round of base closings, but Brunswick Naval Air Station was shut down. The flag was lowered in Brunswick on May 31.
Want to keep bases open at home and stop spending billions on infrastructure in foreign nations?
Vote Ron Paul 2012!
No joke ! The recently announced cuts in Army and Marine Corps ground forces are going to put a big hurt on our ability to respond to more ‘problem’s’. Add to that the announced re-call of at least 2 combat brigades from Germany, not to mention the huge amounts of equipment returning from Iraq, and eventually Afghanistan, and the much needed space to locate all of these people and equipment is gonna be fast disappearing. The BARCO has already gutted whole Base’s, eliminating that needed space, in the name of downsizing. Pray tell, when 2 Brigade’s of 1st Armored, and their M-1’s and other vehicle’s, come home, where do we station them ? Ft Hood’s full, Ft. Knox is built up to capacity, Ft Irwin’s so overloaded it has to expand almost every year thru emminent domain and Ft. Drum’s at capacity now. Same for Riley, Carson, Lewis (including the Yakima Complex), Stewart, Benning, Chaffee and Bragg. And this is just Army. Anyone wanna go look at the BARCO damage to the Air Force ? Loring is a prime example there that we all can see close up and personal, can’t we ? The Navy and MC aren’t faring any better either. Before anymore cutting overseas is done, it would behoove those calling for this retreat from our overseas base’s, and the responsiblitiy’s we have their, to ask just where are we gonna locate our returning troop’s and their families ? The days of a hollow force structure, and the much needed industrial base to support it, are a lot closer than anyone realizes.
Maybe if we returned the National Guard personell to their civilian life, closed a lot of bases over seas, stopped the rediculous idea that we can bring democracy to people who have no idea of what it is and if they do, don’t want it. Maybe we could save the US tax payers a lot of money. Money that could be better spent on infrastructure and education.
With power comes responsibility. The U.S. is in a lot of these base’s simply because we were there to support the host country when they were either overun (as in South Korea) or as a result of our being attacked and fighting back and winning ( as in Japan and Germany). Do I argue that we need to re-evaluate our reasons for being there or realize that the political world in some of these same country’s has changed ? No, not at all. Germany is more than able, now that the Russian’s have been all but tossed out on their ‘can, to take care of itself. The same can be said for Japan. But it needs to be repeated that anyone country, unless thru either a serious internal reality check, or the very real demonstration of a Collective Defense Arangement being invoked, can be overun by any other. But thru collective defense agreement’s, like NATO, the possibility of that happening is reduced by realizing that the responsibility for the protection of anyone country is, in reality, the responsibility of those that can and that those that can’t, in assisting. Collective security benefit’s us all, in a lot of different ways. But crying ‘Retreat !’ and then bringing everyone home at the cost of encouraging the ambition’s of dictator’s and terrorist’s (and face it, Saddam was the poster child for this one !) these action’s only serve to feed these dictator’s ambition’s. Sooner or later, those ambition’s are gonna’ pop out, human nature being what it is. Not to be a doom-and-gloomer but look at Iraq. We’re gone for only a month and now look at what’s happening. And anyone that believes that the Iranian’s are simply sitting on the sidelines needs a serious reality check. No one may like it but the most isolationist of us can see this one coming. And you can bet that the Iranian’s are taking a good look and calculating too. As soon as they feel that they have ‘the edge’ they are gonna start pushing to see where and when they are gonna get a response. The big question now is who’s gonna be the one to respond ?
Saddam was a poster child. He tried war with Iran and got spanked. He tried Kuwait and we spanked him. After that he pretty much learned that he should stay in his own borders. There was NO pressing need to invade Iraq. They had NO Navy and what air power they had was laughable. In the last century of warfare, those two factions of military power have proved vital to anyones succesful outcome.
IMO, Afghanistan should have been a poster child to the rest of the world. When they admitted that bin Ladden and his organization were guests of theirs, we should have told them they had a very short period of time to turn them over to the Worlld Court in the Hague. If they didn’t meet that deadline, we should have immediately utilized our significant air power and started destroying every conceivable exit from that country and working our way inland until they complied. I highly doubt that there is anyother message that would be understood by the Taliban than outright brutal force. Afghanistan is still a century behind the rest of the world and is not a threat to attack any of it’s neighbors.
Europe and for that matter Russia knows that if they were atttacked by an aggressor that we as a nation would respond with our military aid. Probably taking on the brunt of the work of warfare on their behalf. They in effect along with Japan and South Korea are enjoying a free ride to some extent, while we have been footing the bill for their defense. Which ironically has allowed them to enjoy enough stability, along with their neighbors to lure our once prominent industries to move out of the USA to enjoy non-existant environmental laws and cheap as dirt labor.
Maybe if these companies were not being assured green pastures on the back of our US tax payer supported military, they might remember where they had a stable base of operations.
The entire 2005 base closing plan seems to have amounted to nothing more then shifting jobs and development from the North to the south and west..
Newt Gingrich got the Loring base move to his district in Georgia, for example.
Even the Brunswick navel air station hasn’t been really been closed it has been moved to Florida to scan the seas for smugglers and boat people.
Closing here and building them overseas. Welcome to the New World Order. We can use the Constitution to clean up with.