The United States is not the only colonizer, but it does possess some 95 percent of the world's foreign military bases. And it does operate on the basis of a belief in its own unique superiority. At World BEYOND War, we believe that a step toward holding the U.S. government to the rule of law, and a step toward abolishing war, is the closure of foreign bases. So, we are working to oppose new bases and close old ones around the world. This can be done. Numerous bases have been stopped or shut down.
Approaches we are taking include public education and nonviolent activism directed against bases and militarism in general. We also try to use the environmental damage of military bases against them. U.S. bases have poisoned ground water in numerous nations with "forever chemicals," yet those nations and the relevant localities have been denied all right to compensation or control over their land.
We're also trying an approach that could turn U.S. propaganda against itself. A pretense is generally maintained that having U.S. bases on every speck of land somehow makes the United States safer. A measure we supported was recently passed by the U.S. House and then scrapped to please the Senate. It would have required the Pentagon to explain how each foreign base makes the United States safer, rather than endangering it or having no effect on its "security." Research would show that in fact among many other disastrous impacts foreign bases make the colonizers less safe than they could be without them.
The immediate opportunity, of course, is to close the U.S. bases in Iraq as demanded by Iraq. The world and the U.S. public need to join Iraq in that demand.
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