NGA battle may be lost, but war continues
Never underestimate the power of liberal guilt or the width of the Mississippi. It was a suspicion all along, and we absolutely hate the fact that the fear has become reality and the guilt-driven need to make right the sins of the past coupled with Missouri’s inability to view Illinois as part of the region — except when they want our money — will cost taxpayers more and make our nation just a little less secure.
St. Louis leaders succeeded in painting this area as a backwards cornfield that couldn’t possibly foster the hipster brainiacs who will be manning the new National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s western headquarters. Well, they are right about our rural roots, but those roots also give us the ability to smell what comes from the south end of a bull from a mile away. The NGA rationale for North St. Louis was purely that, and incredibly insulting as they act bewildered about where workers will be found when the region’s No. 6 employer is Scott Air Force Base with 13,000 workers and when 70,000 Illinoisans manage to stumble their way into St. Louis to power the regional economy.
This war may be lost, but this community can either surrender to the emotional illogic being applied to the North St. Louis decision or fight to the death for the logic of putting a defense installation next to Scott Air Force Base, just like its parent institution was sited next to Fort Belvoir and just like military planners have seen as the obvious answer for NGA-West for more than a decade.
B.S. Point 1: NGA’s future personnel want to live in the new, gentrified North St. Louis with its urban vibe. Folks, many of the people staffing NGA will come from Scott Air Force Base. They are smart, computer savvy young people who already speak defense, have security clearances and carry the hiring preference of being veterans. NGA employees of the future seeking the “car-optional lifestyle” will want good housing values and strong schools for their kids, which they will find in North St. Louis and its public school system?
B.S. Point 2: It costs less to build in North St. Louis. What?!? Since when does Walmart or any other large developer look for a blighted, inner-city site with aging infrastructure and the bare minimum of space? They want open, shovel-ready land. St. Clair County offers 400 acres for free, with an interstate interchange and light rail line connecting to whatever hip areas NGA employees would want to live. This area offers the security of a military base as a neighbor and the buffer zone of open land to protect NGA. North St. Louis offers a security nightmare, tangled property issues and more questions than answers.
B.S. Point 3: St. Louis and its urban renewal Promise Zone are owed this facility. Sorry. This decision is not about what’s best for the City of St. Louis. It is about what is best for our nation’s security. Putting it next to the military users of the information and making the link between them secure is paramount. Fixing the wrongs of the Pruitt-Igoe housing experiment should have been a federal and state and city priority for the past 40 years, not some imperative of apologists that drives up taxpayers’ costs and compromises the security mission.
So now the end game. We are a community of those who have served and defended this nation. We are once again called to serve and denounce this decision at nextNGAwest.com. Let us not take the path of liberal poster boy U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin in tweeting his acceptance, but golly, still feeling good about Scott’s future.
Parochialism and politics have turned this into a pathetic civil war, but this wrong recommendation must not go unchallenged.
This story was originally published April 2, 2016 at 2:00 PM with the headline "NGA battle may be lost, but war continues."