Monmouth County Freeholder Lillian Burry was 100 percent correct in noting, in her recent letter to the editor, that the closure of Fort Monmouth by the feds has cost New Jerseyans jobs and dollars. And of course she is also 100 percent correct in stating that our military bases here in the United States should not be “hijacked from one state and transported to another purely for self-interested political reasons.” (The history behind that statement is that New Jersey lost Fort Monmouth and Maryland got it).
I suggest, however, that her recommendation that the New Jersey congressional delegation be mobilized “to refute any suggestions that the military facilities located in New Jersey should or could be closed or moved to another state” would be ineffective in helping us to hang onto our military bases.
She essentially said we should pit our pols against other states’ pols in our begging to the currently reigning pol or whatever comes after him.
Much better and more effective in protecting New Jersey’s and every other state’s bases would be to use pressure to make sure that no military facility situated in the United States could be closed until every American-endangering, dollar-draining foreign base has been evaluated and found truly necessary — not just an extension of our empire.
I would much rather have Fort Monmouth’s jobs and dollars suctioned off to Maryland or Kansas or Mississippi than to have more trillions of dollars expended by us in protecting countries that should be protecting themselves. Japan and South Korea come to mind, especially since they (and others, including potential military adversaries) have greatly benefited from our insane foreign trade policies, but Germany as well as others in NATO and SEATO also should be bearing the major cost of their own defense.
Let’s let other nations pay for their “homeland security” and let’s not forget that jobs and dollars are the least of our concerns in this matter. Do we really want American troops scattered all over the world as targets for the weapons of some “leader” like today’s North Korean bedbug?
You will notice that I have not specifically mentioned our bases in Iraq and Afghanistan and Whackistan and other sites of our lunatic desire for “regime change.” (Not that I think that regime change is a bad idea, as long as it starts here. Maybe we can even make the Constitution legal again.)
Obviously those bases should be kept operational for another 4,000 years or so, or however long it takes for our fantasies about democracy and our associated perversions to wow their populaces. Obviously.
Neal Pronek
Farmingdale