President George W. Bush has proved he is willing to go to the mat on a few key issues, but it appears that everything else is up for grabs and can be sacrificed at a moment’s notice on the altar of political expediency. Defense is a case in point.
Thankfully, Bush is serious about missile defense. However, some of his other moves are not just questionable, they are scary. One such move already has driven a wedge between Bush and the military and provoked a confrontation between the president and key members of his own party in the United States Congress.
Last week, 23 Republican lawmakers sent a letter to Mr. Bush telling him they were “gravely disappointed” by the decision to abandon our only live-fire training range on the east coast located on Puerto Rico’s Vieques Island. This letter was followed by one from the American Legion reminding the president that both the Navy and Marine Corps consider Vieques their “most important East Coast training site” and that he “campaigned on a promise to shore up combat readiness.”
It has become increasingly clear that Bush’s key political advisers thought he could get away with giving up this vital piece of property on an island few people in the United States can even pronounce. If we can’t pronounce it, we can’t discuss it, and if it isn’t discussed, who is going to notice except the extremists who have been stirring up the islanders and the Puerto Rican community in New York. And who knows, in 2004, it might help him win a few more Latino votes.
The administration is trying to sell the military and Congress on the idea of moving the bombing rage to a site in his home state of Texas on a stretch of coast near Kingsville.
Mr. Bush has signaled that he is going to ask his colleagues in the House and Senate to cooperate by repealing a law requiring a November referendum on Vieques on whether this bombing range goes or stays. It isn’t going to happen.
Rep. Bob Stump, R-Ariz., who chairs the House Armed Services Committee and Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., one of only two members of the Upper Chamber to sit on the Armed Services and Intelligence committees, are putting up roadblocks. Inhofe is not impressed with the Texas site as an alternative. He says that commercial and general aviation routes in the area would prevent Navy ships from firing their guns and an inter-coastal waterway would prevent the Marines from practicing amphibious landings.
Inhofe says that he admires the president and wants to support him. “But I cannot agree with a politically-motivated decision which sacrifices national security and unnecessarily puts the lives of our men and women in uniform at risk,” he said. Inhofe points out that we have looked for adequate equivalent alternative sites and “they do not exist.”
Inhofe states, “If we lose Vieques training, we will be putting our troops in harm’s way in a degraded state of readiness that will threaten their mission and their lives.” He pledged not to stand by and let this happen.
Inhofe is not impressed with the argument that the bombing range on Vieques has subjected the people of the island to unbearable hardships because we train with live ordnance 10 miles from the local community. “At Fort Sill, in my own state of Oklahoma, live ordnance is used on a range that is within two miles of the city of Lawton. Furthermore, we train at many other locations within the United States where live ordnance is used on ranges much closer to the local community,” he said.
The White House is trying to make us believe that giving up Vieques is inevitable because there is no way the local residents will approve the bombing range when they have a chance to vote on the matter this fall, but let’s look at the facts: Of the 180 protesters arrested during the last training exercise, only 20 were from Vieques. Most of the opposition is coming from activists in the Puerto Rican Independence movement, representatives of Fidel Castro, and Navy opponents on the Puerto Rican mainland who are egged on by Hollywood publicity-seekers or frustrated New York City political activists.
The best-kept secret about Vieques is that 2,500 of the island’s 9,300 residents already have signed a petition indicating that they want the military to remain. Imagine that! It’s difficult to get a quarter of a community to agree on where to put the stop signs, let alone anything that is supposed to be this controversial.
Inhofe said that on his visits to Vieques, he has had no problem convincing undecided residents on the importance of the bombing range. “Their sons and daughters serve in the military, too, and when I explained that it was necessary for their safety that they have a place to practice the things we may be asking them to do in life-and-death situations, they all said, ‘We want it to remain.'”
Inhofe points to the incident in Kuwait that occurred in March of this year as evidence of what can happen without the availability of adequate live-fire training. Six military personnel were tragically killed in a training accident. “Lack of readiness of Carrier Air Wing Three was part of the problem,” Inhofe said. Senator Inhofe also believes that this decision will have a domino effect on other military ranges around the world. Political activists hungry for issues will see this as a new opportunity to promote themselves at the expense of the United States military, which has been the envy of the rest of the world.
For Vieques residents without ties to our military, who still are undecided, there are 50 million more reasons to vote for the bombing range. That’s the amount of money Congress has chipped in as a reward for the community if its voters elect to keep the range.
Both Inhofe and Stump believe that the referendum is winnable if the president would fight for it and if our armed services are allowed to make their case. In fact, at 10 a.m. tomorrow, Stump has scheduled a hearing on Vieques and asked Department of Defense witnesses to testify on the readiness implications. “The United States Navy has spent the better part of the past two years convincing Congress that Vieques is ‘indispensable,’ the ‘premier U.S. Navy training facility,’ and the ‘Crown Jewel’ of training,” said Stump. The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee says that he agrees with these assessments and said, “This hearing is an opportunity for the Navy to convince us otherwise.”
There are other unilateral decisions made by the Bush administration that have defense experts worried. The decisions to dump the two-war readiness requirement and give Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld no more than $18 billion of the $30 billion increase he has asked for in order to rebuild infrastructure and improve readiness apparently are designed to appeal to those who want more money for social issues. The decisions to forgive China’s behavior toward our crippled EP-3 aircraft and recent arms shipments to Cuba will appeal to the international business community. The decisions to scrap our land-based Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles and improve access by Russian merchant vessels to U.S. ports may be designed to get Russian President Vladimir Putin to sign off on his plan to build a missile defense system.
The agreement on maritime matters, signed last week, between Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta and Russian Transport Minister Sergey Frank have some of our intelligence experts shaking their heads in disbelief. The 1997 lazing incident in Puget Sound involving the Kapitan Man, a Russian-flagged merchant ship, either has not been investigated by Mr. Bush’s defense experts or has not been taken seriously. In 1992, in a gesture of friendship, Mr. Clinton opened up commercial ports in this strategic area to both Russia and China, allowing their ships to rub noses with our aircraft carriers based at Everett, Washington and our nuclear powered ballistic-missile submarines based in Bangor. This was unwise and led to an irrevocable injury to one of our intelligence officers who was taking pictures while flying over the ship. However, the possibility for further mischief involving our ships and subs is enormous.
It was hoped that, under Mr. Bush, the incident would be properly investigated and this security breach corrected. Instead this administration, like the previous administration, apparently has chosen to look the other way. Missile defense is important but it will be years before that system is in place. Meanwhile, if our land-based ICBMs are dismantled, those nuclear powered ballistic-missile submarines will be the only real deterrent we have. If those subs haven’t been targeted, they soon will be if those commercial ports in strategic areas remain open to Russia and China.
Mr. Bush should be commended for his commitment to build a defense against incoming ballistic missiles, but he needs to be reminded that the defense of this country should be the primary objective in every policy decision. Any area involving defense is too important to use as a bargaining chip.
