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Donald Rumsfeld has been secretary of defense twice.
His first time in the barrel, he was working for President Gerald Ford, a World War II Navy veteran. This time around, he's working for George W. Bush, whose military record is, to be charitable, enough to put him in front of a firing squad.
A few weeks ago, Rumsfeld announced he was considering closing some commissaries and on-base schools. Said the secretary, "what am I doing running grocery stores?"
Military resale activities--commissaries, exchanges, and so on--have existed ever since there was a military.
* In many of the remote communities that military bases were set up in, the local economy would be unduly stressed by not providing resale activities. Example: Fort William Henry Harrison, Montana. During World War II, this base trained one of the forerunners of the modern Green Berets. The base is near Helena, Montana, which is not a large community. If you dropped five thousand people into a community that already has five thousand people, the stores there would not be able to absorb the new patrons and you'd have one disgruntled, anti-military community. Before anyone comes in with "the merchants would expand to meet need," consider that expansion on that scale takes time, and while the merchants are trying to find land, close on it, build on it and stock their new stores, the GIs are still in there buying up all the toilet paper.
* A related subject: some of the places that bases were constructed had no local economy, or no local American economy. Example: Fort Riley, a frontier outpost in Kansas. Basically, Custer found a flat piece of ground that didn't have too many snakes on it and built an installation. There was no town around.
* Commissary and PX shopping privileges are part of a soldier's pay. It's a recruiting tool: join us and you can shop tax-free in our discount outlets. Which, at this time, Wal-Mart can lowball but PX shopping is still tax-free.
Next time around we'll discuss the commissary, the thing Rummy wants to close.
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