Ft. Bragg, North Carolina

President’s Bush’s recent visit to Ft. Bragg, North Carolina to inspect personally the barracks conditions that were posted on You Tube is but a drop in the bucket. When BRAC generals arrive in Fayetteville, North Carolina, the southern town grown hydrophonically on Interstate I-95, they equally will be as disappointed. BRAC commissions are scrambling to try to prepare for the onslaught. Bragg Boulevard, the main thoroughfare from Ft. Bragg to downtown, is going to be closed. Highway 13, a rural road that leads to Greenville, is going to be extended across the base. All ready the military installation is ripping at the seams. Chain link fences have been put up. Razor wire is coiled along the perimeters of official looking compounds. They moved “Iron Mike,” the seminal statue of military men hoisting the American Flag, from along Bragg Boulevard to somewhere inside the camp. Most of the inhabitants of Fayetteville don’t know what the hell is going on. For years and years they have lived there with full access to the military base. It was part of Fayetteville, and Fayetteville was a part of it. There were no boundaries. The city built the All American Expressway so people could get home from work faster. It was a huge vast expanse of sandy pine trees, and there was no need to disguise this was where army soldiers train. Most of the residents of Fayetteville were either actively enlisted or veterans of the military. It was part of their family. Now with the recent surge in terrorist activity, Ft. Bragg has been buttoned down. Once open throughways now are flanked by surveillance kiosks. No longer can you motor to the PX to buy cheap liquor and cigarettes. (That’s Post Exchange) No longer can you use the back roads of Ft. Bragg to travel to Pinehurst, North Carolina. (The Special Forces Command Center is out there!) Now in the modern age of terrorism the Defense Departments has seen fit haul in 30,000 more troops, batten down the hatches, and live and let live. What kind of a life is that? Thousands and thousands of military troops going and coming to Iraq, and this is what they get? The “Old Fayetteville” commission decided to clean up downtown. What once was a symbolic landscape of military extra-curricular activity became…. well? Downtown. A few restaurants and a movie theater. My, times have changed. It used to be military towns had prostitutes, strip clubs, bowling alleys, massage parlors, and chain restaurants. When did the needs of soldiers at war change? Did something suddenly happen when Corporal Brasler decided he would rather go to a coffee shop than a strip club? Did coffee suddenly become an able replacement for the need for female companionship? I don’t get it. Men fight. Men die. Men get to let off steam. Living in Right Wing Conservative America is no way to reward troops for a job well done in Iraq. Neither is shipping them back to a stench infested, back woods, suicide parlor. If we really had the best interests of our troops at heart, they would replace Fayettenam completely and start from scratch. Drug Trafficking. Gang violence. Combat. It seems if America could recognize that men want women, we wouldn’t have these problems.