 |
Add to My Group
2
2
1
View Ratings |
Rate It
America's "Bases of Empire"
By Stephen Lendman (about the author) Page 1 of 7 page(s)
For OpEdNews: Stephen Lendman - Writer
Besides waging perpetual wars, nothing better reveals America's imperial agenda than its hundreds of global bases - for offense, not defense at a time the US hasn't had an enemy since the Japanese surrendered in August 1945.
So when they don't exist, they're invented as former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Charles W. Freeman, Jr., suggested in a May 24, 2007 speech to the Washington Institute of Foreign Affairs:
"When our descendants look back on the end of the 20th century and the beginning of this one, they will be puzzled. The end of the Cold War relieved Americans of almost all international anxieties." As the world's sole remaining superpower, "We did not rise to the occasion."
"We are engaged in a war, a global war on terror, a long war, we are told....How can a war with no defined ends beyond the avoidance of retreat ever reach a convenient stopping point? How can we win (any war let alone the hearts and minds of millions) with an enemy so ill-understood that we must invent a nonexistent ideology" for justification.
In his 2006 book, "Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic," Chalmers Johnson discussed the known number of foreign US bases by size and branch of service. According to the Department of Defense's Base Structure Report (BSR) through 2005, it totaled 737 but likely exceeds 1000 today with so many new ones built since then - some known, others secret and always others planned.
Johnson also highlighted the fallout - unacceptable noise, pollution, environmental destruction, expropriation of valuable public and private land, and drunken, disorderly, and abusive soldiers committing crimes that include rape and murder that often go unpunished under provisions in US-imposed Status of Forces Agreements (SOFAs).
An excerpt from his book reads:
"Once upon a time, you could trace the spread of imperialism by counting up colonies. America's version of the colony is the military base; and by following the changing politics of global basing, one can learn much about our ever more all-encompassing imperial footprint and the militarism that grows with it....even more than in past empires, a well-entrenched militarism (lies) at the heart of our imperial adventures." To such an extreme that "each year we spend more on our armed forces than all others nations on Earth combined" to garrison troops "in more than 130 countries."
The Pentagon lists them in its annual Base Structure Report, but "its official count of between 737 and 860 overseas installations is incomplete" because excluded are numerous secret ones - for espionage, unofficially shared with host countries, or other reasons not disclosed.
The bases reflect "force projection" for global dominance and are positioned to strike any nation that might challenge it, friend or foe. But they come at a great cost - well over $1 trillion annually with all homeland, foreign, and other budget categories included. According to Johnson, a far greater one as well, the same dynamic that doomed past empires unwilling to change - "isolation, overstretch, the uniting of local and global forces opposed to imperialism, and in the end bankruptcy" as well as the end of democracy, loss of personal freedoms, and tyranny.
During WW II, Brits complained that GIs were "overpaid, overfed, oversexed, and over here." Despite the war, some called it the US "occupation," and UK historian David Reynolds discussed it in his book, "Rich Relations: The American Occupation of Britain, 1942-1945." He borrowed the word from George Orwell's December 1943 comment that "It is difficult to go anywhere in London without having the feeling that Britain is now Occupied Territory."
Today, millions in countries globally feel the same, and with good reason. Even at peace, America's presence is intrusive, hostile, and at the expense of the host country populations.
A new book is now out titled "The Bases of Empire: The Global Struggle against US Military Posts," a collection of important articles on America's worldwide empire and military presence that enforces it.
It's edited by Catherine Lutz, Brown University Professor in the Department of Anthropology, Watson Institute for International Studies with a forward by Cynthia Enloe, Clark University Research Professor, Department of International Development, Community and Environment and Women's Studies.
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.
 Contact Author |
Contact Editor |
 View Authors' Articles |
by Jonah Goldberg
$34.95
Number of pages: 496
Publisher: Doubleday; 1 edition
by Schonbach
$15.00
Number of pages: 507
Publisher: Dissertations-G
by George Norlin
Number of pages: 108
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
by Rebecca Beyer
$5.95
Number of pages: 3
Publisher: National Catholic Reporter
| 2 comments |
Want to post your own comment on this Article? 
|
||||
|
||||||||||||||
News (0) 
Touching (0) 
Funny (0) 
Supported (0) 
Interesting (1) 
Inspiring (0) Tell a Friend:
|
Copyright © 2002-2009, OpEdNews |
