Black Buzz News Service
Washington, D.C.
August 4, 2010
(BBNS)
July 26, 2010 posted by Michael Leon
By Paul J. Balles at Redress.com
Paul J. Balles argues that the continued presence of 1,000 American military bases outside the USA nearly two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union is a symptom of the arrogance of power that threatens local communities and ultimately the USA itself.
”What is America doing in Iraq and Afghanistan? It’s called ‘nation building’. What business is it of America to be building other’s nations? It’s really none of their business. It’s nothing more than the arrogance of power.”
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, ending the Cold War, America breathed a sigh of relief.
A problem that should have been addressed at that point was neglected. The question that should have dominated American thinking is: Do we really need to maintain the many US military bases abroad?
Twelve years after the Soviet collapse, America reportedly had 702 overseas military bases in about 130 countries and another 6,000 bases in the United States and its territories. That report failed to include a number of so-called secret bases and bases in the Middle East.
As military historian Chalmers Johnston observed: “…the United States dominates the world through its military power. Due to government secrecy, our citizens are often ignorant of the fact that our garrisons encircle the planet. This vast network of American bases on every continent except Antarctica actually constitutes a new form of empire…”
By 2009, the number of American bases outside of the USA had increased to over 1,000. Anthropology professor David Vines said these represented “the largest collection of bases in world history”.
Vines added: “Officially, the Pentagon counts 865 base sites, but this notoriously unreliable number omits all our bases in Iraq (likely over 100) and Afghanistan (80 and counting), among many other well-known and secretive bases.”
Where are all those military bases outside the military zones like Iraq and Afghanistan, and what purpose do they serve? “More than half a century after World War II and the Korean War,” wrote Vines, “we still have 268 bases in Germany, 124 in Japan, and 87 in South Korea.”
Are the bases in Germany and Japan there to deter any present or future leaders in those countries from a repeat performance of the events that led to World War II or to the Korean War?
What Congress and the public hear from the administration and the military establishment is that these bases are necessary for national security. That, of course, is a paranoid claim.
The Vietnam War should have taught us that we weren’t invincible. Whatever affect it had on the thirst for power was short-lived. The power-grabbers needed the worldwide power stations for reasons other than fighting wars.
Hundreds of thousands of military personnel and their families had employment in jobs that kept the unemployment numbers down and raised few complaints from taxpayers who foot the bill. It also kept the military-industrial complex profitable.
The problem with the whole scheme is that hundreds of these military bases are located in areas that are not war zones, and their sole function is to assure America’s interests in a particular area.
The side effects of the entire scenario have been disastrous, and will continue to be. Personnel from the bases pose a clear threat to local communities and ultimately to America simply for being there.
Military personnel don’t have the same access to US entertainment that they had at home, so they become involved in drugs, excessive alcohol, prostitution and rape – the spoils of non-wars.
Equally heinous results come from the reactions provoked by a military presence anywhere. American military personnel threaten the local cultures in such a way that they provoke the development of resistance. They create enemies.
That is exactly what happened with Osama Bin Laden. He had a persuasive argument against America’s hunger for world control and the threat that posed.
What is America doing in Iraq and Afghanistan? It’s called “nation building”. What business is it of America to be building other’s nations? It’s really none of their business. It’s nothing more than the arrogance of power.
Paul J. Balles is a retired American university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for many years. For more information, see http://www.pballes.com/.
1 comment:
In order to maintain Euro/American style of white supremacy you need a strong military deployed around the globe to keep the natives in check and dependent upon the USA.
Since the Vietman war, America has been on the path of crushing any and all popular movements for self-determination of people in the third world solely for the benefit of the largest Military- Industrial-Complex in the history of the world. When there is no internal conflict abroad, the American empire will invent a fake conflict all for the preservation and gain of its warped capitalist system. The classic example of this was the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
The U.S. in concert with the racist Brits overthrew the dully elected government of the people in Iran, and installed a Anglo/U.S. puppet in the Shah.
The native people in Hawaii elected their queen to represent them, but the racist capitalists such as Dole Pineapple and others overthrew the Queen and seized the entire Hawaiian Islands and made said a U.S. terriority in 1900.
The U.S. racist capitalists didn't want brown skin, or yellow skin, Black skin or Red skin peoples determining there God given right to their own self-determination in their own countries .
The racist capitalist pig William Randolph Hearst invented the Spanish American conflict with that b.s about the battle ship USS Maine so that the U.S. could seize and take by force from Spain, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. Spain was goaded into a war solely for the expressed purpose of furthering the U.S. economic and poltical hold on said countries. That was the beginning of the American empire.
I just cited a few examples of America's hypocritical thirsty insatiable appetite for power and control, and maintenance of the status quo.
America since its inception has always shown a gross arrogance for power and deceit.
Furthermore America's arrogance of power in the 21st. Century is nothing but pure unadulterated Manifest Destiny white supremacy camouflaged as nation building.
Now the U.S. has a tan puppet in the White House to the bidding for the vast Military Industrial-Complex. Nothing has changed.
Its the same " Old Wine in New Bottles."
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