A century-old colonial attitude drives the military’s poor planning on Guam

Evidence

The major elements of the buildup that generated so much opposition—the idea of building a shooting range on sacred indigenous land without even considering an alternative; seizing 1,700 acres of additional private land; planning to increase Guam’s population by 50 percent without the civilian infrastructure to handle the growth; embarking on a major buildup without a master plan—all come back to the same root cause: for more than a century, “we can do what we want here” has been the military’s core attitude toward Guam. — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 259

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Condenses the chapter’s central causal argument: that planning failures are not mere incompetence but symptoms of a persistent colonial mindset.