Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World by David Vine

Author:David Vine [Vine, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781627791700
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

A SELF-LICKING ICE CREAM CONE

As the FOB2012 conference neared its end, I asked another conference participant (who requested that I not use his name) whether during his wartime deployments in Iraq he had seen the problem Major Elliott had described—a base with private security guards doing nothing but protecting privately contracted cooks who were doing nothing but cooking for those same private security guards.

“A lot,” he replied. It’s the “self-licking ice cream cone”—by which he meant a self-perpetuating system with no purpose or function except to keep itself going.

“I sat with my ice cream and my prime rib on Sundays” in Iraq, he continued. It’s been this way since 2001, maybe even since Kosovo. There’s been lots of waste and inefficiency. Maybe, he said of the logisticians who coordinate all the amenities, it would be better “to fire the lot and start over.”

In one of the conference’s final conversations, contractor and military representatives discussed fears about the military market drying up as U.S. and European governments cut defense budgets. Many agreed that contractors would increasingly move to build, supply, and maintain bases for UN and other international peacekeepers, as well as for oil and mining companies, whose extraction facilities often look like military bases already.

Peter Eberle, a representative from General Dynamics (which just missed making my list of the top twenty-five overseas contract recipients), asked: “What if we have peace break out” after the United States and NATO withdraw from Afghanistan?

“God forbid!” replied Major Elliott.

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