Biden has decided to not put the U.S. Space Command Headquarters in Alabama’s Redstone Arsenal, where the late Hugh McInnish worked,  and in a state that voted 62 percent for Trump, and only 36 percent for Biden.

He’s moving it instead to Colorado, in a state that voted 55 percent for Biden: “the strongest Democratic performance since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964, and the first time that it voted for a presidential candidate of either major party by a double-digit percentage since Ronald Reagan in 1984.“

Local Alabama officials are crying foul, and asking for an investigation of an Air Force General with a conflict of interest [Alabama AG calls for investigation into Biden’s reversal on Space Command HQ, by Houston Keene, Fox News, August 21, 2023].

Alabama AG calls for investigation into Biden's reversal on Space Command HQ https://t.co/fj8UjBy6OH

— Fox News (@FoxNews) August 22, 2023

They can ask the GAO to investigate the General, but if it’s Biden’s decision, for political reasons, nothing can really be done.

That put me in mind of this passage from W.E.B. Griffin’s 1986 Cold War–era military thriller The Generals, part of the action of which takes place at Alabama’s Brookley Air Force Base in 1962, which at the time employed 16,000 local civilians. (If you’ve never heard of Brookley, don’t feel bad, you’re probably too young.)

Brookley Air Force Base was considered by logisticians to be the most ideally situated military supply facility in the world. Its eastern border was Mobile Bay, thus Brookley had “on-station” piers and wharfs for deep-water shipping. Brookley was also connected to the rail yards half a mile away, which were the terminus of four major railroad lines. And when the National Defense Highway System (“The Interstate”)—fought through Congress by President Eisenhower—was completed, I-10 (East and West) would run past Brookley’s west fence, and I-65 (North) would begin two miles from Brookley. Brookley’s runways were capable of handling any existing or projected fighter, bomber, or transport aircraft. Its maintenance hangars and its thousands of employees could perform any maintenance required by any aircraft in the Air Force inventory. And its enormous warehouse facilities contained stores of supplies for just about every Air Force maintenance need.*

*Brookley Air Force Base was ordered closed, as “an economy measure,” as the Vietnam War escalated in late 1964, shortly after the re-election of President Lyndon B. Johnson. Mobile, Mobile County, and Alabama had voted, two to one, for Senator Barry Goldwater.