Armchair BRAC commissioners Sen. John Warner (center), Gov. Mark Warner (right) and Sen. George Allen (left) vowed to fight – all for one and one for all – to save military installations in their state of Virginia from closure, regardless of their military value to America’s national defense!
Yesterday was D-day for many communities in America that depend on military bases and Pentagon offices to sustain their economies. And, today some of them are facing imminent and potentially devastating disruptions because of final decisions that were rendered by the U.S. Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) commission.
Please click here for my previous article explaining the BRAC process and highlighting the myopic arguments politicians have deployed to keep the defense installations in their constituencies off the BRAC hit list. After all, in this zero-sum process, one constituency’s gain is invariably another’s loss. Alas, there’s the rub….
The BRAC was constituted to be impervious to political pressure and influence. Yet, even Sen. John Warner (R) – arguably the most respected and influential member of the U.S. Senate – showed little regard for its non-partisan mission. Because when the BRAC announced office closures in his state (which would drain over 20,000 jobs from Northern Virginia), Warner accused Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld of improperly manipulating the process.
Now, one might expect such an intemperate and unsubstantiated accusation from a less tenured and politically insecure (Democratic) senator. But Republican Warner has been in the senate for almost 27 years and is now chairman of its powerful Armed Services Committee. Therefore, no one should know better than he the inappropriateness (and utter futility) of reaction with such self-interest and hysteria to BRAC decisions. (Once the BRAC renders final decisions on all defense properties, the president (as Commander-in-Chief) invariably approves them without reservation. And, President Bush has indicated that he intends to do the same.)
Nevertheless, Sen. Warner was hardly the only politician who cried foul when the BRAC dropped a bomb on his constituency; which is not surprising because such a hit will lead inexorably to many job losses including, quite possibly, his. Indeed, the BRAC process lays bare the fact that America’s military industrial complex has become more about jobs (and lucrative defense contracts) than defending the country from foreign attacks. But, notwithstanding economic and sentimental values (regarding, for example, installations like the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington DC), it is imperative that politicians either respect the BRAC process as constituted or amend it to give greater weight to the economic and other values some politicians clearly think should be factored into its decisions.
The BRAC? It’s about J-O-B-S stupid!
News and Politics
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