Is Sailors attacking Sailors.
It is not anything else……in my humble opinion.
Now granted, I was never stationed in Bahrain, but I spent more than my fair share of time there trying to get a building completed so we could give a select group of Sailors a decent place to work. Because of Arab petulance and stupidity on the part of those folks working in the hallowed halls of an old building in San Dog , it did not get done. However throughout that time, driving back and forth across the island I never really felt unsafe-at least anymore unsafe than an American in the middle of a bunch of stinking Arabs should feel.
Which gets to one of the dirty little secrets of today’s modern Navy. Why have not the dependents been allowed to return to Bahrain?
For those who don’t follow the Navy closely or military matters in general, let me bring you up to speed. In 2003, in one of the most asinine decisions that the US Navy made, it got permission from DOD to order all dependents-wives and children of serving military members- home. The ostensible reason was because of increased threat to US personnel. Interestingly enough, however, the ban only applied to Navy personnel-who comprise 90% of the personnel in Bahrain. Somehow the powers that be convinced the folks in higher echelons that it was the right thing to do. Do USAF personnel have some sort of force field on them?
Suffice it to sat the Bahrainis were not amused. Despite all my misgivings about Arabs-and I have a lot of them, since they rank at the bottom of the demographic food chain for me-the Bahrainis have been solid allies of the US for a long time and they have done a lot to support the US when the rest of the Arab world would not even so much as lift a finger. They put up with a fortress of a Naval base in their midst-and they have to put up with a steady influx of people into -a lot more than need to be there IMHO.
Its been over 4 years since that happened. Iraq is or has been pacified, depending on who you wish to believe . And yet, Bahrain is still an unaccompanied duty station.
Why is this an issue? Because in our “diverse” mixed gender Navy, a place like Bahrain is ripe for things like this to happen. Why? Because with people doing year to year and half tours, alone, many living off base-its a foregone conclusion that there is more at play here than has been publicly released. And when it is released-trust me its gonna be ugly.
My theory? Keeping the dependents away allows for two things: 1) It allows the leadership there to work their staffs like dogs. I have an acquaintance here who used to work there. His quote? “I worked 17 hours a day during the work week and on the weekends just 8 hours”. Now I guess to some out there, that logic makes sense-its never made sense to me and I no longer have that kind of work ethic. Life is too short. The second reason is the money. With COLA and other incentives like tax free people make a lot of money coming through there. Even civilians get paid a healthy differential.
What does the US lose by doing this? A lot. If families were there, there would be a lot less unauthorized ass going on and there might even be less of a need for a curfew. ( Like it really works so well-the multitude of ways people beat it is the subject of a whole different post). Also it might actually show Arabs and the Arab world in general that Americans are good people. People tend to underestimate the value of what spouses and kids bring to the effort of building goodwill for the US.
What about numbers? Well as I have said before, when it comes to the US in the Middle East, less is more. A lot of the staff things that do go on in Bahrain either don’t need to happen-or they can be outsourced to someplace where people can do three year tours. For those that stay-the ability to have people who actually have a reason to remain committed and focused on what they are doing-instead of turning over every year is priceless.
Which is why the US Navy won’t do it. Working people harder not smarter is the only management style many of the leaders in DC and in Bahrain know.
Thus endeth the rant for today.