By Sherwood Ross, opednews.com, June 22, 2011
President Obama may claim he’s got to go slow in drawing down U.S. forces fighting in Afghanistan but what’s his excuse for keeping open 268 U.S. bases in Germany? Is he expecting an attack by the Red Army? There are folks living well on those 268 bases at public expense as well as the military contractors supplying them.
No other nation begins to operate even a tiny fraction of the 865-plus bases the Pentagon runs overseas to, depending on your viewpoint, (a) protect America from dangerous potential enemies who are lurking everywhere, or (b) to dominate the rest of the world. And since 95% of all overseas bases located in somebody else’s country are operated by the USA, millions of people suspect (b) is the answer; indeed, foreigners fear Uncle Sam might subjugate them.
Should Americans care? Only if they don’t mind spending $140 billion a year. That’s what it’s costing them. The U.S. Conference of Mayors the other day voted to shift Pentagon spending of $126-billion a year from Middle East wars to our struggling cities. But we’d get an even bigger savings by removing the ring of steel with which the Pentagon has girdled the planet.
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