boo freaking hoo

I'm Puerto Rican by heritage (and Norwegian and Irish and possibly a bit Jewish, too, depending on who I ask). But not in attitude: It often seems that the people of that fair isle want all the benefits of US citizenship, though without any of the responsibilities.

Case in point: the protests over the Navy training base at Vieques, which was the last live-fire facility suitable for large scale naval exercises.

“There are no other places to conduct the surface gunnery live-fire and large-scale integrated air to ground and surface gunnery operations we normally undertake on Vieques,” said Vice Adm. Robert J. Natter, Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Plans and Policy. “The Vieques weapons range is the only place where aircraft, Navy surface ships, ground forces, and Navy and Marine Corps personnel assigned to our Atlantic Fleet can conduct integrated training with live ammunition under combat-like conditions.”

That quote is from a US Navy press release from September 1999. Of course, the Pentagon lobbying was in vain: under pressure from Puerto Rican activists and the usual rogues' gallery of leftists from Al Sharpton to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Clinton administration ordered the live-fire exercises to be phased out. And—unfortunately—President Bush continued the process; the final round of combat training there was last spring. As a consequence the Roosevelt Roads Naval Station, of which the Vieques training area was part, is closing down.

Which makes the locals very displeased.

''This is going to be a ghost town,'' said Máximo Menéndez, who had a part-time security guard job at the base. “A lot of people are affected. People who worked there 20 or 30 years, they have nothing now.''

For some of its neighbors and employees, the base's closing is retaliation for the Puerto Ricans' raucous pressures that forced the Navy to surrender its bombing range on the eastern tip of the tiny island of Vieques, eight miles southeast of Rosie Roads. For others it represents another step toward an end to U.S. colonial presence in Puerto Rico, seized by U.S. troops during the Spanish-American War in 1898.

But for nearly everyone, it is an economic hammer blow that leaves people like Hoffman, Menéndez and others in and around Ceiba, a pleasant town of 18,000, all but gasping and struggling for survival.

''Business has gone down a lot,'' said Daisy Santos, a cashier at a grocery store just outside the base. “This used to be packed on weekends. Most of our customers were from the base. I guess we'll wait and see what happens.''

Gee. What exactly did you think was going to happen? Cause, meet Effect…

UPDATE: Florida Cracker—from whom I got the second link above—also points to this story which claims that naval readiness hasn't been hurt in the slightest.

Good.

UPDATE 2: And that bit about me being a little Irish? It's true. Even when it's not St. Patrick's Day.