Apparently the deserts of Nevada, so similar in terrain to the Pentagon's other main target
practice area, the Iraqi outback, simply aren't challenging enough for the Navy's top guns
anymore. Now they want to bomb around Big Sur, natural jewel of California's Central
Coast, home of the Henry Miller library, the Esalen Institute, FDR's famous tin house,
Nepenthe and much more.
A new plan issued by the Navy's Strike Fighter Wing in January calls for nearly 3,000
bombing practice runs a year from Lemoore Naval Air Station in the Central Valley and
aircraft carriers in the Pacific to Fort Hunter Liggett in the Santa Lucia Mountains, whose
oceanward slope is Big Sur. Lemoore is the home base for the F/A-18 Hornet strike
fighter planes. The scheme calls for the jets to drop 25-pound "test" bombs onto a 500-
foot in diameter target painted on the grounds of Fort Hunter Liggett. One Navy flack
terms the plan "kindergarten for bombers."
Pressed by Congressman Sam Farr (D-Monterey) to explain itself, the Navy, perhaps
trying to capitalize on the current fuel crunch, says it all comes down to conserving
energy. By bombing next to Big Sur, instead of Fallon, Nev., they can save nearly $3
million a year in fuel costs. Of course, the Navy doesn't display such a penny-pinching
attitude when it comes to funding for Trident submarines, F-22 jets or aircraft carriers.
The 150,000-acre military base, nestled next to the Ventana Wilderness Area, was sold to
the Pentagon at a handsome profit by William Randolph Hearst in the 1940s, who had
evicted the remaining Salinan Indians from the site when he purchased it as his private
pleasure ground in the early 1900s. Today, the upper Stony Valley area, wedged in the
mountains, is still largely an intact ecosystem, a thriving oak savannah of the type that is
becoming increasingly rare as so much of the coast falls to the bulldozers of developers.
Indeed, a 1981 report commissioned by the Fort's top brass concluded that the base
probably contained a "greater conservation of resources (of grassland, oak savannah and
woodland, and chaparral) than any other contiguous parcel in the state of California." The
land is so special that National Park Service has tried to get the Army, which manages the
Fort, to turn it over to them.
This part of the California coast is home to some of the nation's rarest and most prized
species, starting with the California condor and the sea otter. There are also endangered
fairy shrimp, Pogogyne clareanna, a rare mint endemic to the area, bald eagles and 450
Tule elk. There also a dwindling number of perfectly preserved specimens of homo sapiens
bohemiensis in the Henry Miller tradition, though the ecosystem of these creatures have
been similarly ravaged by rich lawyers and e-millionaires rampaging through their
previously secluded habitat.
Not to worry, says the Navy, we have the best interests of these creatures at heart, and no
harm will come to them. This is a rather robust bit of eco-consciousness from the same
group that is even now attempting to secure the right to permanently bombard humpback
whales in the Pacific with mega-shots of high-range sonar. The sonar pulses have been
known to cause the whales to issue screams of agonized distress as they get hit with
decibel levels that would instantly kill any human. The whales become disoriented and
beach themselves. The Navy's underwater soundings have also been linked to ear
hemorrhages in the giants of the deep.
Those bullseyes for the Navy fighter jets' bombs would nearly mark the precise area that
the now landless Salinan tribe considers the center of the creation. And indeed, the area
harbors one of the richest clusters of archaeological sites on the California coast, including
painted caves and a delicate and fragile sandstone natural arch used for vision quests. "It
only takes one bomb to land in the wrong place," says Gregg Castro, head of the Salinan
tribal council. "The arch is unique. Once it's gone, it's gone. There's no repairing it."
There are also several private inholdings within the proposed bombing range, including
the San Antonio de Padua Mission, founded in 1771. The Franciscans -- the closest you
get to a nature sect in the Catholic Church -- aren't too pleased about their ancient
sanctuary being buzzed by F/A-18 fighter jets 10 times a day. The Friars are joined in
opposition with the Benedictines, who have just built and opened the New Camaldoli
Hermitage, a hillside retreat meant for quiet meditation and worship a few miles away.
Nevada has been rocked by dozens of nuclear bomb tests, but what people are mostly
complaining about these days is the arrogance and nastiness of the Navy's fighter pilots,
who are relentless in bombing the desert out by Fallon. The Navy has succeeded in doing
what seemed impossible: uniting ranchers in the anti-environmental Wise Use movement
with activists from the Sierra Club.
Bombs aren't the only peril. Last Oct. 29, Navy pilots opened fire with live 20 millimeter
ammunition on telephone company workers outside of Fallon. Fortunately, the pilot
missed the workers, but hit their truck. Navy officials said the pilot, from the same F/A-18
Strike Force Wing at Lemoore that now wants to bomb inland from Big Sur, mistook the
telephone tower for his intended target.
The plan to bomb in the Santa Lucia Mountains is really an attempt by the Pentagon to
keep from losing its dwindling empire. Fort Hunter Liggett was supposed to be closed
down in 1995 as an unnecessary and costly facility under the Base Realignment and
Closures Act. This scheme is largely an attempt to give it a second life as a bomb crater.
But surely there are better uses. Perhaps, part of it should become a national park. But
most of it should be returned to the Salinan tribe, as they were promised in the 1860s.
Alexander Cockburn is coeditor with Jeffrey St Clair of the muckraking
newsletter CounterPunch. To find out more about Alexander Cockburn and read
features by other columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at
www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2001 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
