Will Congress bomb Bush’s giveaway?

Would you fly with a pilot who had never been in a cockpit? Would you climb with a guide who had never scaled a cliff? Would you skydive in an area with no suitable landing site? Would you allow a doctor who had never performed surgery to operate on one of your children?

That, in effect, is what the Bush administration is asking us to do in giving up our bombing range on Vieques Island in Puerto Rico. He wants us to give up the only site on the Atlantic coast where our sailors, Marines and aviators can coordinate and practice critical skills that could keep them alive in the event of an armed conflict. Despite what you may have heard about this controversy, the range on Vieques is essential to the safety of our men and women in uniform because there is no suitable replacement.

Because of its unique location and geography, Vieques is the only site where our military forces can conduct simultaneous ship-to-shore naval gunfire, and air-to-ground fire from F-14s and F-18s deployed from aircraft carriers and beach landings. If a dust-up occurs in that half of the world, it would be impractical to transport the ships and personnel to and from the Pacific coast for that type of training – presuming, of course, we had the time and the Chinese, who now control the Panama Canal, would let us navigate that strategic waterway.

Thankfully, Congress appears unwilling to go along with the June 15 request made by Navy Secretary Gordon England to cancel the Nov. 6 referendum for the island’s residents and simply give up the site on or before May 2003. Although the U.S. House of Representatives Armed Services Committee recommended canceling the referendum, it took the additional step of inserting a provision to require the Navy and Marine Corps to continue training at Vieques until the Commandant of the Marine Corps and the Chief of Naval Operations certify that an equal or superior location for training exists and is available for use. The full House will vote on the bill next week. This week, when the defense authorization bill is marked-up by the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Military Readiness, Ranking Member James Inhofe, R-Okla., is ready to lead the charge to have a similar provision inserted in the Senate version.

To be sure, allowing residents of Vieques to decide an important military issue like this is bad policy. At the time the law was passed creating the referendum, it was thought to be an unavoidable concession to the climate created by the Clinton administration. The hope was that, in 2000, the nation would have the good sense to elect a president who recognized the importance of having a strong national defense. It was assumed that President Bush would use the bully pulpit to make the case for the range and allow the Navy to take the campaign directly to the island’s residents. He hasn’t.

While Secretary England admits that an alternative site or training approach is not likely to be readily available in the near term, his answer is to turn tail and run. On June 27, during a hearing in the House Armed Services Committee, he said this:

At the time of my decision, the next round of Navy and Marine Corps training was scheduled to commence the following Monday, June 18. The situation regarding Vieques has been mired in controversy and legal action since a tragic bombing accident April 19 of 1999. For example, during the training exercises in April-May 2001, 180 people were arrested … seven civil cases have been filed against the Navy … Navy onsite personnel reported that the situation was (and still is) disruptive to normal base and training activities and adds to safety concerns.

Question: If the Navy and Marines can’t stand up to a few protesters and lawyers, how are they going to handle a real adversary? That is a pitiful excuse! How many men and women in uniform is the Navy secretary willing to sacrifice due to inadequate training in order to appease a few protesters, mostly political opportunists from the mainland?

The accident was tragic to be sure. But one death in the last 50 years is not a bad safety record. Furthermore, the good citizens of Vieques hardly have been inconvenienced. In fact, residents in Jones, Georgia; Garrisonville, Virginia; Willis Landing and Hobucken, North Carolina plus Acolita, Stedman and Fallbrook, California all live much closer to live-fire ranges than the residents of that Puerto Rican island. Without that bombing range, the naval base on the main island would be a candidate for elimination and that would have a devastating impact on the local economy.

On July 29, a non-binding referendum was held in which two-thirds of the island’s residents voted to get rid of the range. It was not surprising. They have been bombarded by anti-Navy protesters who have blamed the range for everything from higher infant mortality rates to increased risks of cancer and heart attacks. These unsubstantiated scare tactics worked because the Navy did not mount a counter offensive.

In 1999, a special Defense Department panel reviewed an exhaustive Navy study of 18 possible alternative sites. It concluded, “There are no potential sites that can meet the current stated requirements for combined-arms live-fire training.” Don’t expect one suddenly to materialize. The people, who now complain about the noise from live-fire ranges, are like those who complain about the noise from airports. They moved next to them because the price of the adjacent land was low and now that they live there, they want to kick them out.

For some time, all of the services have been fighting the rising tide of radical environmentalists, who want to protect every snail and cockroach but don’t give a whit about whether the people of the United States are adequately able to defend themselves.

On May 22, Major General R. L. Van Antwerp, the assistant chief of staff for Installation Management for the Army told the House Armed Services Committee about the constraints and challenges he faces in trying to protect military test and training ranges. Gen. Van Antwerp reported:

Army lands host 153 federally listed species on 94 installations, and 12 installations have lands designated as critical habitat (four of these habitats are as yet unoccupied by the species for which designated).

It is unlikely that we can find any place on earth that would suffer less damage than the range on Vieques. After all, we have been bombing the same area over and over again for the past 50 years. Anything that can be destroyed already has gone by the boards. Would environmentalists prefer that we go into a new site and do the same thing? Hardly!

No, there isn’t a place on earth or in the heavens above that we could go to do this kind of training without destroying something that someone would want to protect. We could go to Hell, where presumably everything – except souls condemned to eternal damnation – already has been destroyed by fire. Perhaps we could strike a bargain with the Devil himself. Some think we already have.