Conversion of El Toro Base: Will It Fly?

The proposed closure of the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, the Long Beach Naval Shipyard and March Air Force Base comes at a particularly difficult juncture for us as Southern Californians and as Americans.

We have already been hard hit by severe defense budget cuts that affect one out of four jobs here in Orange County alone.

This worrisome state of affairs cannot help but bring to mind the analogy of the bull.

Let us say we have this strongest and mightiest of animals for our protection. The pasture lands for miles around have been safe from marauders for many years because of its legendary strength and agility.

Alas, new owners take over that house on “the Hill” overlooking the pasture. These well-meaning overseers decide the bull has become a bottomless pit, grossly overfed and too rambunctious. Besides, the land has become too valuable to have some practically useless animal taking up space on it.

So they severely cut his grazing lands and, in the process, effectively emasculate the bull.

Then the day finally comes when others notice that this once magnificent creature is hobbled. They visualize themselves as the honchos and decide to take by force that which the bull protected for so many years. But the citizens raise such a hue and cry that the overseers are prevailed upon to beg and plead with the creature to stop the marauders.

But time has run out. That once magnificent beast is no more than a lazy and indifferent ox, unwilling and unable to do anything more than snort a feeble whimper, then settle weakly on its haunches, gutted for all intents and purposes.

So the new owners in the house, seeing it was hopeless, fled in terror, leaving our rich and glorious land, not to mention its citizenry, in the lurch, exposed to the greedy exploiters and ruthless usurpers.

In retrospect, might the moral of this story be that those who saw themselves as penny-wise with the U.S. military were, in the end, astoundingly pound-foolish?

DONALD E. ZWEIFEL

Gulf and Vietnam Vets Historical Assn.

Orange