Word: base
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...halcyon days when there was more than enough federal pork to go around, closing an outmoded military base was a rather simple operation. Between 1961 and 1977, for example, the Pentagon disposed of hundreds of military installations by executive fiat. But in 1975 the Air Force made the mistake of trying to shut down its Loring base in northern Maine. The state's Republican Congressman, William Cohen (now a Senator), joined then House Majority Leader Tip O'Neill to require the Pentagon to submit costly and time-consuming environmental impact studies before any base could be shuttered. Loring was saved...
Last week the House moved to break the political impasse that has prevented any major military base in the U.S. from being decommissioned during the past eleven years. The bill, sponsored by Texas Republican Richard Armey, is designed to fend off angry finger-pointing from constituents by putting the onus on a nine-member bipartisan commission...
...dozen years has the Pentagon been able to close a major military base, even though some of the installations it operates -- at a cost of billions to the taxpayers -- were built to help fend off marauding Indians or troublemaking Redcoats. The reason? Not Pentagon profligacy, for once, but political pork...
Whenever the military moves to shutter a base, the member of Congress in whose district it is located rises in righteous indignation. Given the you- scratch-my-back-and-I'll-scratch-yours philosophy that reigns on Capitol Hill, even such an anachronism as Virginia's moat-encircled Fort Monroe -- built for the War of 1812 -- has been spared, although it costs $186 million a year and serves no useful military purpose...
There are, however, some very pragmatic and hard-nosed arguments -- in addition to the idealistic and gooey ones -- that it is in America's national interest to base its foreign policy on cooperation among allies, deference to the desires of smaller friends and respect for treaties. The foremost reason: it works, or at least works better in the long run than does the swaggering alternative. Unilateral assertions of U.S. pressure have proved more likely to foster resentment about Yankee imperialism than to promote lasting influence. Nor does Washington always know best: its friends in Latin America have generally proved more...