Page 2 of
2 Imperial opportunities for US
builders By Tom Engelhardt
most of a planet; when you already
have 737 or 850 or even 1,000 bases and
installations of one sort or another outside the
US; when your global properties stretch from
Germany, Romania, the island of Diego Garcia, and
Kyrgyzstan to South Korea, Guam and Australia and
you're still eyeing the few blank spots on that
map like, say Africa.
Keep an eye on
Africa, by the way. It could be the next boom
continent for base
construction. The Bush administration just
recently set up Africom, a new global command to
cover that land mass. It may be the last such
command formed - unless, someday, Russiacom and
Chinacom prove to be available. The Pentagon is
now reportedly searching Africa for spots to
position what they like to call "lily pads", which
are basically small, relatively Spartan bases that
won't be so noticeable (or generate local ill-will
and resistance so readily). Right now, about all
the US has is a "lily pad" at Djibouti on the horn
of Africa, but stay tuned.
Of course,
we're still just scratching the very surface of
opportunity here. All you need is a well-connected
corporation that will throw a few imperial crumbs
your way. I mean, how about the $53.4 million
contract that went to ITT Federal Services
International Corporation of Colorado Springs,
Colorado - aren't you located somewhere near
there, anyway? - for "Base Operations and Security
Services at Camp As Sayliyah" in the emirate of
Qatar, to be completed by 2012.
I bet
there's some construction work up for grabs there.
Or just imagine picking up the odd cannoli from
those $23.4 million contracts to build new
"grocery stores" for US bases in Livorno, Italy or
Chievres, Belgium. (The old ones were just so
cramped!). Of course, the Pentagon threw those at
local European firms, which you have to do every
now and then. You know, allies and all that.
But how about Afghanistan? It's a honey of
a place for you - another of those lands American
planners don't see us leaving any time soon. Not a
lot of local firms there to throw good American
construction contracts at and, from a building
point of view, here's the good news for you:
things are going really, really badly in
Afghanistan - which means US troop strength just
keeps rising.
It's now at 25,000 and, of
course, we have to put them somewhere. As a
result, the old Soviet base we took over in 2001,
Bagram Air Base, is about to grow by a third.
Where there were once only 3,000 American troops
on the base, there are now 13,000 and more to
come. So new runways, new barracks, you name it.
It's going to be like a construction horn of
plenty.
Offshore prisons: A specialty
area Here's another small suggestion: As a
young builder with a future abroad, you might
consider specializing and one super area is
offshore prisons. Of course, you'd have to be
paying exceedingly close attention to the inside
pages of a range of newspapers to have any idea
just how flush this area really is - and, given
the subprime mortgage crisis, I suspect you've had
other things on your mind. So, let me just bring
you up to speed.
The Iraqi inmate
population at American prisons has been rising
like yeast and construction crews have been
hustling to catch up. Camp Cropper, inside the
mega-base Camp Victory at the edge of Baghdad,
has, for instance, undergone constant upgrades. It
started out as a bunch of tents, but, by 2006, was
a $60 million state-of-the-art prison - and it's
been expanding ever since. In April 2007, for
example, the military was soliciting bids for
"construction projects" at the camp valued at up
to $5 million. Perfect, no?
Dusty Camp
Bucca, in the south of Iraq, was a poor cousin
until recently. But - fine news all around - about
$110 million is about to be poured into expanding
its overcrowded quarters for a detainee population
that should soon leap from 20,000 to 30,000. The
work will include "retrofitting 13 existing
compounds to add concrete pads to prevent
tunneling, better segregation areas and better
shower and latrine facilities," as well as "15 new
guard towers, three medical units and work on two
'supermax' compounds with the highest levels of
security".
If, on the other hand, a bit of
that Bagram Air Base work were to fall your way,
then keep your eye on our extensive prison network
in Afghanistan where, for instance, Pul-i-Charki
prison is rumored to be on the verge of a major
expansion, possibly into the new Guantanamo. By
the way, don't overlook Guantanamo itself.
That crown jewel of offshore prisons is
now a hive of construction activity. Don't even
worry about the $10-$12 million that's already
being spent to create a semi-permanent "tent city"
on an unused runway there in which the US military
plans to hold war-crimes trials for some of the
prison's detainees; focus instead on the $16.5
million camp that's going to be built elsewhere on
the base to house up to "10,000 Caribbean
migrants" - just in case, assumedly, something
happens in post-Castro Cuba. And that may only be
a detention appetizer. The main course could be a
$110 million-dollar contract to build a second
"compound" that would hold 35,000 more of those
"migrants".
And keep in mind that, as a
young builder, if you have the slightest yen to
see the world, then this planet is potentially
your oyster - or penguin. Ingratiate yourself with
the right folks and there's really just about
nowhere you couldn't go for the US military, not
even Antarctica. The navy's been building a
scientific outpost on that great, icy continent
since the 1950s. By now, McMurdo Station has more
than 60 buildings - and it's getting warmer! So
count on those numbers to rise ...
Flying below the imperial radar
Keep in mind that we're really talking
tip-of-the-iceberg here; just what can be gleaned,
which isn't much, about American base construction
abroad from a media that doesn't attach any
importance to the subject.
Still, it's
obvious that our imperial busy beavers remain
tirelessly at work - and you could be one of them.
A few other countries have the odd base or two
abroad, but here's a stat to be proud of: It's
estimated that 95% of all foreign bases on this
planet are the US's. That's no small boast. Just
consider Okinawa, a Japanese island smaller than
the Hawaiian island of Kauai. The United States
has 38 bases there that cover 19% of the island's
prime real estate. That has to be a record.
If this is news to you, I'm not surprised.
Here's the strange thing: We Americans garrison
the globe in a way no people has ever done - not
the ancient Romans with their garrisons stretched
from North Africa to distant Britain; not even the
19th century British with their far-flung naval
coaling stations. US garrisons around the world
are versions of "gunboat diplomacy" and
colonialism all wrapped in one. They are
functionally the US's modus operandi on the
planet. Everyone out there knows about them, but
few Americans are particularly aware of them.
Staggering billions, for instance, have
gone into those state-of-the-art mega-bases in
Iraq, and scores of smaller ones, since Baghdad
fell in April 2003. They are presences, facts on
the ground of the first order. No matter what
anyone was saying in Washington at any moment,
they spoke of permanence, of a desire to be in
Iraq forever and a day; and yet the Iraq debate in
the mainstream these last years has taken place
almost without serious mention of them. You can
turn on your TV and watch American journalists,
standing somewhere in Camp Victory, report on
other subjects. But when has one ever taken you on
a simple tour of that mega-base?
The fact
is: in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, the US
garrisons regularly slip beneath the American
radar. Think of it, perhaps, as a way to have
one's cake and eat it too. The US manages to be an
imperial presence on the planet without ever quite
having to be reminded that it is part of an
empire, an identification which rubs against the
American grain.
Being American
functionally means never having to say you're
sorry. I only mention this, by the way, because,
if you take my advice, you stand to make loads of
money, but you'll slip below the radar too.
Tom Engelhardt is editor of Tomdispatch and the
author of The End of Victory Culture. His
novel, The Last Days of Publishing, has
recently come out in paperback. Most recently, he
is the author of Mission Unaccomplished:
Tomdispatch Interviews with American Iconoclasts
and Dissenters (Nation Books), the first
collection of Tomdispatch interviews.
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