Vieques Island lies off the eastern coast of Puerto Rico. It is 55 square miles of poverty, scrub vegetation and sandy beaches inhabited by 9300 souls. The Vieques firing range occupies 900 acres, or 2.7 percent, of the land owned by the Navy on Vieques. The firing range is located at the eastern tip of the island and is more than eight miles from the nearest town. The range has operated for almost sixty years without injury to anyone living or working outside the range.
The eight-mile margin of safety around the range is generous. In Utah, people live closer than that to a bombing range. In Oklahoma, citizens live less than two miles from the gunnery range at Fort Sill. No one has claimed any harm. In Ocean County, New Jersey there are 50,000 people living within an eight-mile radius of the Warren Grove bombing range; some live within two miles of where the bombs strike. The citizens of New Jersey do not complain. Neither do the citizens of Utah or Oklahoma. Thirty-three U.S. communities are hosts to live-fire military training ranges. So why was there so much agitation over the Vieques Island bombing range? Here’s the answer: a small group of left-wing militants wanted to inflame the issue in order to leverage their pet project, which is political independence for Puerto Rico. All of the side-issues that have been raised, such as health and environmental concerns, are just window dressing. Clouding any clear understanding of what is really propelled the Vieques protests was a platoon of buffoons, each with a political agenda of his own.
To grasp the essence of the Vieques controversy you
must know a few key facts.
Fact One: All of the outspoken politicians from
the U.S. mainland who were against continued military
exercises on Vieques were from New York State.
Almost all of them were from New York City.
Fact Two: There are 3.8 million Puerto Ricans
living in Puerto Rico and another 2.6 million Puerto
Ricans living in the mainland United States. There
are about 1,050,000 Puerto Ricans living in New
York State, about two-thirds of whom live in New
York City. Far more Puerto Ricans live in New York
City than live in Puerto Rico’s capital city, San Juan.
Fact Three: The total population of New York
City is 8,008,278, of whom 2,160,554 are Hispanic.
Fact Four: About half of the population of New
York City speaks a language other than English at
home, as compared with only 18% for the rest of
America.
In other words, Puerto Ricans, together with Hispanics who are sympathetic to Puerto Rican causes, comprise an intimidating voting block. New York politicians are quick to genuflect when confronted by “minorities with priorities.” A current hot topic among Puerto Ricans is Vieques.
Bring On the Clowns
The Vieques controversy is a political circus and no circus would be complete without clowns. The
Clown Prince of the Vieques charade is the Reverend
Al Sharpton. When Sharpton heard that there were
functioning television cameras in Puerto Rico, he
made a mad scramble for the sunny isle. On May
Day 2001, he and his accomplices cut their way
through the perimeter fence of the Vieques bombing
range and were promptly arrested for trespassing.
Sharpton and three others, Assemblyman Jose Rivera
(D-Bronx), Bronx Democratic Party chairman
Roberto Ramirez and City Councilman Adolfo
Carrion, were tried and convicted. The accomplices
got forty-day jail sentences. Sharpton got ninety days
as a repeat offender. All four were jailed in a federal
lockup, the Metropolitan Detention Center in the
Sunset Park section of Brooklyn, New York, on May
23rd. The court rejected a request for bail.
The local press could not get enough of Al Sharpton.
Thousands of articles sought to capture his every
mood and chronicle the arrival of his celebrity guests.
Al was holding court in the slammer. Newspaper
headlines told the tale of his jailhouse sojourn:
“Sharpton and Three Others Jailed for Vieques
Protest”
“Supporters Hold ‘Free Sharpton’ Rally at Jail”
“Sharpton Announces Hunger Strike: Won’t
Eat Until Bombing Stops or Until He’s Freed”
“Sharpton’s Typical Jail Day: Up at 5, in TV
Room by 6”
“Sharpton Weeps: Overcome With Angst Over
Plight of Vieques Victims, Says He’s More Serious
Than Ever About Presidential Run”
“Sharpton Denied Bail”
“Sharpton to Renew Wedding Vows in Prison”
“Sharpton Refuses to Renew Vows in Prison”
“Says He’s Fasting, Not on Hunger Strike:
Announces Liquid Diet”
“Sharpton Mom Visits, Urges Him to Eat
Soup”
“Sharpton Says He’ll Eat Soup”
Sharpton’s doting mother, Ada, urged her two-hundred-thirty-eight-pound baby boy to eat some soup. Once Big Al began chowing down on hearty chowders, there was little danger that the world would lose this great humanitarian. Democratic Councilman Adolfo Carrion was even quicker to quit his fast, saying he wanted to remain strong to run for Bronx borough president. So much for noble self-sacrifice.
Sharpton, Carrion, Ramirez and Rivera had dubbed themselves “The Vieques Four” in the hope of making themselves appear to be the sainted victims of injustice; it only solidified their reputation as self-promoters. Then-Democratic mayoral candidate, Fernando Ferrer, tried to provide the half-hearted hunger strikers with a face-saving escape hatch. “We are asking the Vieques Four to end their hunger strike and not jeopardize their health,” said Bronx Borough President Ferrer.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. traveled over a thousand miles to Vieques, at no small expense, for the express purpose of breaking the law. He was arrested, tried and sentenced to thirty days in jail for trespassing on the bombing range in April 2001. While he was jailed at Guaynabo, his wife Mary gave birth to their sixth child. The proud parents named the newborn Aidan Caohman Vieques Kennedy. It was oh-so nineteen-sixties. A fawning press corps basked in the radiance of an actual Kennedy. No one thought to ask why this self-described “environmental lawyer” had not made an appearance at any of the other thirty-two U.S. bombing ranges where far more people live much closer to the action. Face it, political posturing is pointless if there are no television cameras to capture those ever-so politically-perfect poses. It was all about pleasing the Puerto Ricans way up north in New York City.
New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton blew into Puerto Rico for a one-day visit which she called a “gesture of solidarity” with protesters Robert Kennedy Jr. and labor leader Dennis Rivera. Her photo-op finished, she scurried back to New York. She did not visit Vieques.
The Democratic Party sent a team of “observers” to Vieques. Chairman Terry McAuliffe made an appearance. He called for an immediate end to military readiness training on Vieques.
Jacqueline Jackson, the wife of the Reverend Jesse Jackson, made it to Vieques without her husband. The revelation of his latest infidelity and the birth of his love-child by a junior co-worker were fresh in the news and Jackie was still miffed at the randy reverend. Jackie teamed up with five others who cut through a fence and trespassed onto Navy property. Security officers slapped a set of steel bracelets on Mrs. Jackson who shouted “For the people of Vieques!” right on cue. Reporters captured every word. Mrs. Jackson ensured her own imprisonment by refusing to post a $3000 bail, which is mere pin money for a woman of her considerable wealth. Bail is also refundable. It was all for show.
The Reverend Jackson, who had promised us that he would spend a while in reflective retreat, could stand it no longer. There were actual functioning television cameras on Vieques! Jackson rushed to Vieques and promptly denounced the Navy’s military preparedness exercises on Vieques as the arrogant act of a colonizer. He said the treatment of the detained protesters was an effort to break their spirits. “It’s gratifying to be here on Vieques, in Puerto Rico, where the people have met the challenge of those who try to break their spirit and have not given up,” he intoned. In a speech that was noteworthy only for its high blather quotient, Jackson said that “To bomb Vieques is a colonial act” and “arrogant.” He was silent on the symbolism of practice bombing in Oklahoma and New Jersey. When Jackie walked out of federal prison in San Juan after serving her ten days, she flashed a two-finger peace sign at the cameras and hugged her husband. “This has been a very humiliating experience and a very dehumanizing experience for me,” said the woman who traveled a thousand miles to break the law. She was put on probation and was not allowed to protest at the naval base for one year. In response to this very lenient sentence the Reverend Jackson inveighed: “We will challenge this in court and in the streets!”
What Is At Stake
The national security of the United States,
which includes the self-governing commonwealth of
Puerto Rico, depends upon the preservation of a
well-trained and coordinated military defense. The
Navy bought two-thirds of Vieques in 1941 for use
as a staging area during World War II. Over the years
the Navy purchased more of the 33,000-acre island
and dedicated 900 acres for use as a target range for
ship-to-shore and air-to-ground gunnery practice and
amphibious landings. Vieques is the size of
Manhattan Island. The bombing range is less than 3%
of the island. Navy Secretary Gordon England called the Navy’s prized Atlantic range on Vieques
the “crown jewel” of the Navy’s Atlantic training
sites. He said that sailors and Marines would have to
alter their preferred methods of preparing for combat
as a consequence of losing the Vieques training site.
From the Navy’s perspective, Vieques is ideal because it lies outside the traffic lanes used by commercial aviation, which allows military pilots to practice delivering live ordinance from altitudes they would be using in combat. The Vieques range also allows Navy ships to operate in deep water within firing range of land targets, but outside of commercial shipping lanes. During a single coordinated practice operation ten-thousand Navy personnel aboard destroyers, submarines, frigates and ammunition ships may take to the high seas from ports on the U.S. mainland and from the 22,600-acre Roosevelt Roads Naval Station, the largest in the world, on Puerto Rico’s east coast. The Navy has used Vieques to train troops for conflict from World War II to Kosovo and contends that the island’s terrain is ideal for practicing simultaneous assaults by air, land and sea.
Vieques was the only East Coast facility where U.S. forces could conduct fully integrated land, sea and air exercises using live ammunition. Vieques allowed the Navy and Marines to practice coordinated amphibious assaults, air strikes and gunfire support. Training with simulators and dummy ammo doesn’t give service personnel the polished skills that they can only acquire by working as teams to assemble, fuse, load and fire live ammunition.
Eighteen alternative sites were investigated by the Navy. In testimony before Congress, then-Lt. General Peter Pace, commander, Fleet Marine Forces Atlantic and then-Vice Admiral William Fallon, commander, Second Fleet, stated that no East Coast alternative to Vieques existed that would allow integrated instruction in combat readiness. The dis-integrated training that alternative sites would require has been likened to practicing individual musical passages, but never rehearsing the full orchestra together. The result would be second rate.
The Vieques matter was independently evaluated by a congressional panel in 1999. This panel concluded that “alternate training methods for the combined arms operations most essential for readiness are not currently feasible or available.” When our fellow Americans are sent into harm’s way they should have the quiet confidence that comes from being the masters of their craft. This can only come from previous exposure to the hustle and bang of coordinated live-fire exercises in the company of their teammates.
Why Bush Will Abandon Vieques
In 1999 two bombs landed off-target and killed
a civilian guard named David Sanes. This happened
inside the bombing range. His death
was the first bombing fatality on the range in its sixty
years of operation. No one has ever been injured
outside the range by live-fire exercises. The nearest
town is eight miles away.
Puerto Rican nationalists were quick to exploit this freak fatality and began agitating for the complete withdrawal of the U.S. military form Puerto Rico. Ever eager to court “the Hispanic vote,” then-President Bill Clinton made an agreement with former Puerto Rican Governor Pedro Rossello that the U.S. military would leave Vieques by May 2003 if the Navy lost a referendum on the matter, to be voted on by the residents of Vieques. This is the same Bill Clinton who granted clemency to sixteen convicted members of the terroristic Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN) even though none of the terrorists had requested clemency. What did it matter to the man who had turned the Oval Office into a moral vacuum chamber that the FALN had exploded 130 bombs in Chicago and New York and had murdered and maimed scores of Americans? After all, Hillary needed a leg up with Hispanics in New York.
The subsequent governor of Puerto Rico, one Sila Maria Calderon, repudiated the Clinton-Rossello agreement and demanded that the U.S. military pack up and scram immediately. Greatly encouraged, a militant faction began to organize protests. They were quickly joined by kindred spirits: Hispanic politicians from New York City, Al Sharpton, and the Flying Jacksons, Jackie & Jesse. Protesters on the island issued a statement that they “energetically reject terrorism, war, and any type of violence as a means to resolve conflicts in our world,” and then they promptly set about cutting a 60-foot gash in the range fence and at a dozen other places. Militants began firing incendiary flares at a Sea King helicopter from boats that had illegally entered restricted waters. A similar device was fired at personnel inside the base. There were two violent confrontations with security personnel. Militants hurled rocks and cow manure are security personnel. A sailor was struck in the head by a thrown rock. The protesters who had foresworn “any form of violence” were raising Hell. Thirty-two protesters crashed the perimeter while a dozen Puerto Rico police officers under the direction of Police Chief Pierre Vivoni stood by, only yards away, and did nothing. Governor Calderone then ordered the Puerto Rico riot police to withdraw from Vieques altogether.
Soon thereafter, Governor Calderone signed a noise pollution law meant to outlaw Navy maneuvers on the Vieques range. Only hours later, she filed a suit in U.S. District Court in Washington, DC, against Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and top Navy officials for violating the Federal Noise Control Act of 1972, as well as her own self-created noise law. It was an in-your-face attempt to force President Bush to take a public stand on Vieques.
Self-styled environmental lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sued the government in an effort to halt military exercises on Vieques, citing environmental degradation. Eager to cash in on the controversy, 3,600 of the island’s 9,300 residents have joined a lawsuit seeking compensation for vague illnesses they claim were caused by the bombing exercises. To better understand this particular con-game, see Erin Brockovich in this series.
Governor Sila Calderone pushed for a non-binding referendum on the question of a continued military presence on Vieques. With nationalist feeling whipped to a fever pitch, the people of Vieques went to the polls. Sixty-eight percent of those who voted supported an end to bombing exercises and the Navy’s withdrawal from the island. Thirty percent of voters favored the continuance of Navy live-fire operations on the island. Governor Calderone said the unenforcable referendum carried “moral force.”
Hungry for Hispanic votes, our “compassionate” president collapsed like a two-dollar tent in a gentle breeze. George Bush announced that the Navy would de-camp Vieques by May 2003. Senate Republican leader Trent Lott said that the president’s decision was a complete surprise. “I’ve had basically no contact with the administration over it,” Lott said. “At this point I disagree very strongly with the decision.” Clearly, Mr. Lott was being insensitive to Mr. Bush’s efforts at “legacy building” and “poll-number inflation.”
Conclusion
George Bush has thrown in the towel. Game
over. Pentagon officials called Bush’s decision a big
disappointment. They repeated their opinion that
Vieques was vital to American military preparedness.
The entire affair has left a stink in the nostrils of American patriots. Statehood seemed preordained in 1898, but Congress grew apprehensive of granting this elevated legal status to an alien culture that was overwhelmingly poor, Spanish-speaking and devoid of any democratic traditions. Puerto Ricans remain fierce cultural nationalists, who are fearful of losing their language and culture. From a distance, it’s like watching two scorpions attempting to mate. The scorpions clasp each other with their claws and dance about, hopeful of a successful union, but fearful of being stung by their partner. To this day, Congress quietly opposes statehood, fearing that the Spanish-speaking Puerto Ricans will further Latinize mainland American politics. The Puerto Ricans reject statehood at every opportunity because of their strong cultural nationalism.
So Puerto Rico remains a self-governing commonwealth. The 3.8 million Puerto Ricans enjoy U.S. citizenship and complete freedom from any obligation to pay income taxes. Puerto Rico receives over ten billion dollars each year in federal tax revenues taken by force from the paychecks of mainland American working people. Supporters of an “enhanced commonwealth” status now seek even more political independence for Puerto Rico, such as the right to enter into foreign trade agreements or override acts of Congress, while still collecting buckets of cash from the American taxpayer. Advocates of “enhanced commonwealth” status claim that most of the “none of the above” votes cast in the recent referendum backed their position. “The people of Puerto Rico were unambiguous in their rejection of statehood,” declared Anibal Acevedo Vila, president of Puerto Rico’s Popular Democratic Party. So they were. As Governor Calderone said: “We are Puerto Ricans who are U.S. Citizens; we are not U.S. citizens who happen to be Puerto Rican. We are Puerto Ricans first.”
Both the commonwealth and statehood parties have proven themselves to be incapable of resolving Puerto Rico’s serious problems of chronic high unemployment, crime and drug addiction. Puerto Rico remains more stubbornly impoverished than any of the 50 states despite the billions of dollars that the island drains from America each year. With Puerto Rico now fast fading as an important training site there is little reason for the American taxpayer to continue to subsidize this little Latin culture. It’s time to let these proud cultural nationalists be more purely Puerto Rican. It’s time to cut Puerto Rico loose, to wish them well and to wave good-bye.
In March of 2002 the Puerto Rican Day Parade in New York City celebrated the memory of Pedro Albizu Campos, the leader of Puerto Rico’s independence movement who was convicted of inciting an attempted assassination of President Truman in 1950. Among the marchers was Lolita Lebron, who led a gunfire assault on the United States Congress in 1954. A smiling Hillary Rodham Clinton carried a Puerto Rican flag. Chants of “Vieques, si. Navy, no!” filled the air.
Are America’s pandering politicians influenced by the fact that Puerto Rico contributed nearly as much soft money in 1995 and 1996 as all the residents of New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont combined, including more than a million bucks for President Bill’s reelection campaign and nearly $280,000 for the Kennedys in Congress? Now President Bush is pandering as well. Military preparedness be damned; these gamesmen have not forgotten that Clinton’s valentine to dictator Fidel Castro, the deportation of little Elian Gonzales, cost Al Gore 30,000 Cuban-American votes and the presidency in the year 2000. Mr. Bush has courted the Latin vote at the expense of America’s best interests. Sheepishness and nonsense now prevail. We have lost America’s best possible Atlantic training facility. There is no end to what people without firmly-help virtues will not sacrifice to maintain themselves in positions of power.
Copyright 2002
Thomas Clough