I guess the reason you guys have to be 'alcohol free' over there is because of the muslim restrictions on 'fermentation of grape or wheat'? Why? I can see not taking booze into their homes or drinking on the street, but why can't you drink on base?
No one respects our feelings, beliefs, or customs .... not even in our own country.
But, we are expected to respect everyone else's .... even in our own country.
More of a general policy on deployment. We had the same policy on all the American bases in Bosnia and Kosovo. Sort of makes sense, in that you should be "ready for action" at any time. Don't recall any other reasoning. Although the Americans were generally more serious than any other country about everything in that aspect. When I was in Bosnia in 2001, I was fortunate enough to be stationed on a NATO base, so generally we didn't have to play by the American rules. Here's the comparison I saw:
American base:-No alcohol, not ever, in any quantity. I think you could get "near beer," which tasted horrible and really just reminded you that you couldn't have real beer
-Uniform: combat uniform, body armor, helmet, weapon, all the time, unless you were exercising or going to bed, then you wore PTs
-No trips outside the wire without some sort of official business (not entirely sure on this, more of the impression I got, since I didn't spend all that much time on an American base)
NATO base:-Several bars/nightclubs on post. $0.75 for a half-liter of Sarajevsko Pivo, $1.50 for a pitcher (and that stuff was 12.6% alcohol...sort of reminded me of Old E in flavor). The Italian dining facility on post had little juice boxes of wine you could get when you ate, too. All the PXs also sold alcohol...ironically, including the American PX. As another note, it was also very interesting to see what alchohol and tobacco cost without any taxes. At the Italian PX you could get a carton of Camels for $6
. I got a
4.5 liter bottle of Johnny Walker red for like $45
(took me over a year to finish it).
-Uniform: combat uniform with soft cap on duty, civilian cloths off duty. Weapons generally stayed in the arms room unless threatcon level went up, or you were headed off-post.
-Weekly bus tours of Sarajevo, free passage to all the little CD shops outside the gate, other trips you had to just make up some sort of lame excuse for
.
All in all, it seemed like they were really just trying to make life miserable on the American bases. Granted, these rules may be applicable in the desert (hard for me to make a judgment on the current state of things over there from my own living room), but Bosnia in 2001 wasn't much worse than most parts of Detroit.
