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Strykers face new court fight

Oct-24-2006 » Filed Under: 2/25 SBCT

By William Cole, Honolulu Advertiser

Three Hawaiian groups are seeking a federal court halt to all Army Stryker activities until alternatives to basing the fast-strike unit in Hawai'i are examined.

The latest court clash comes as the commanding general of U.S. Army Pacific at Fort Shafter, Lt. Gen. John M. Brown III, confirmed that the 3,900-soldier Stryker brigade, already well into training, is slated for an Iraq deployment.

Halting the training would be wrong, Brown said, and "not providing full training for these soldiers before sending them into combat would be irresponsible and criminal."

But in a 2-1 decision on Oct. 5, the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Army violated environmental law in planning for the arrival of the armored vehicle unit, and that it must complete a supplementary environmental analysis to consider alternatives to basing a Stryker brigade in the Islands.

David Henkin, an Earthjustice attorney representing the Hawaiian groups, said Brown "is playing the emotion card."

"We're not talking about not training the soldiers. We're talking about where we're going to train the soldiers," Henkin said. "We've heard this time and time again in the Makua (Military Reservation) context where the court says, 'Hey, you know what? You've got a lot of other places where you can train these soldiers.' "

Although an Army official previously said the Stryker unit would deploy to Iraq next summer with its 19-ton, eight-wheeled vehicles, Brown said training is on schedule to culminate in November 2007. [...]


Comments For "Strykers face new court fight":

Sounds like more of the "not in my backyard" mentality that we're see more and more of these days. My home is more "_____" than your's, so let's put the "_____" in your yard and not mine.

Posted by: strykerdad [TypeKey Profile Page] | October 25, 2006 10:46 AM

Strykerdad, the native Hawaiians have given enough. A large chunk of Oahu belongs to Uncle Sam, and all of Kaho'olawe is still littered with UXO, uninhabitable. We all know about Hawaii's scarcity of real estate and its effect on cost of living there.

Moreover, as I have written in another post, Hawaii is just not a good training area for brigade-sized motorized/mechanized land forces. The Army and the Nation is better served by moving 2/25 to Fort Irwin where environmental disputes have already been hashed out, where there's sufficient room for brigade-sized motorized maneuver training, and where they can more effectively train in desert conditions.

Posted by: currahee [TypeKey Profile Page] | October 25, 2006 9:35 PM

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