Friday, July 23, 2010

Fate Of the USNS Comfort

There was a rare instance of sweet harmony this week in the normally bitter realm of Maryland politics. The possibility that the Navy might move the USNS Comfort's home port from Baltimore to Norfolk, Va., in 2013 brought Republicans and Democrats together. From both sides of the aisle came the call to keep the 1,000-bed hospital ship berthed in Canton.

Helen Delich Bentley, who as a Republican member of Congress was instrumental in bring the ship to Baltimore in 1988, this week was working with Democratic Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski and Congressman C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger to block the move. Mrs. Bentley called the 894-foot-long ship "an icon," part of the local landscape. "When you are driving in any direction you can see the Comfort, and it is a comfort," she told The Baltimore Sun.

Mr. Ruppersberger praised the ship as a longstanding "source of pride and jobs" for the Baltimore area. He wants to require the Navy to do a cost-benefit analysis before making a decision. Senator Mikulski called for a federally funded study to examine how moving the ship would affect its mission.

The Comfort has become, to steal a phrase from former President George W. Bush, a uniter not a divider.

How long, we wonder, will this kinship last?

What if moving the Comfort to Norfolk proves to be a better use of taxpayer dollars? The last time we looked, Norfolk was closer to the Atlantic Ocean, where the ship sails, than to Baltimore, which sits in the heart of the Chesapeake Bay. In addition, Congress is considering spending $10 million to fix up a pier in Norfolk, which could be the Comfort's new home.

Putting the ship in Baltimore makes it an easy drive to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, where many Navy medical personnel are stationed. Moreover, the Navy spent $5 million two years ago to upgrade the pier in Canton that the Comfort now calls home. Why move out just after you fixed up the place?

The Comfort has done good work. It has provided emergency medical care for U.S. troops in the Persian Gulf War and Iraq. It has responded to domestic disasters, sailing to New York after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005. Last January, it went on a two-month mission to Haiti, providing humanitarian relief to victims of a devastating earthquake.

Quick it isn't. Once it is called to duty, it has five days to get ready. Maybe the half day it spends steaming down the bay to get to the ocean does not matter that much.

Mrs. Bentley is right: It does look good in our harbor. Mr. Ruppersberger is correct: The Comfort is a source of local pride. Rallying to keep it here has produced an extraordinary accord between our Democrats and Republicans. But the decision of where to put the Comfort should be made on what is best for the country, not on what makes Marylanders happy.

www.baltimoresun.com

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