The United States has permanent military bases in every significant country in the world. “According to the Defense Department’s annual “Base Structure Report” for fiscal year 2003, which itemizes foreign and domestic U.S. military real estate, the Pentagon currently owns or rents 702 overseas bases in about 130 countries and HAS another 6,000 bases in the United States and its territories. Pentagon bureaucrats calculate that it would require at least $113.2 billion to replace just the foreign bases — surely far too low a figure but still larger than the gross domestic product of most countries — and an estimated $591,519.8 million to replace all of them. The military high command deploys to our overseas bases some 253,288 uniformed personnel, plus an equal number of dependents and Department of Defense civilian officials, and employs an additional 44,446 locally hired foreigners. The Pentagon claims that these bases contain 44,870 barracks, hangars, hospitals, and other buildings, which it owns, and that it leases 4,844 more.

These numbers, although staggeringly large, do not begin to cover all the actual bases we occupy globally. The 2003 Base Status Report fails to mention, for instance, any garrisons in Kosovo — even though it is the site of the huge Camp Bondsteel, built in 1999 and maintained ever since by Kellogg, Brown & Root. The Report similarly omits bases in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Qatar, and Uzbekistan, although the U.S. military has established colossal base structures throughout the so-called arc of instability in the two-and-a-half years since 9/11.

For Okinawa, the southernmost island of Japan, which has been an American military colony for the past 58 years, the report deceptively lists only one Marine base, Camp Butler, when in fact Okinawa “hosts” ten Marine Corps bases, including Marine Corps Air Station Futenma occupying 1,186 acres in the center of that modest-sized island’s second largest city. (Manhattan’s Central Park, by contrast, is only 843 acres.) The Pentagon similarly fails to note all of the $5-billion-worth of military and espionage installations in Britain, which have long been conveniently disguised as Royal Air Force bases. If there were an honest count, the actual size of our military empire would probably top 1,000 different bases in other people’s countries, but no one — possibly not even the Pentagon — knows the exact number for sure, although it has been distinctly on the rise in recent years.” This information is from TomDispatch via CommonDreams.org.

How stupid do you have to be to see that this is not a Defense Department, it’s an OFFENSE department? Why does this country feel the need to rule the world by force of arms? We call it protecting the world, but who asked for our protection, and exactly who are we protecting them from? Certainly not an old Muslim guy hiding out in a Pakistani mountain cave. How long are we going to ignore this?

We would also need to get into the whole nuclear arms race insanity. The simple fact of the matter is the idea of using nuclear weapons in this day and age is morally corrupt. We wouldn’t dare use one on anyone that had a chance of shooting a nuke back at us, which makes our continued production and threats to use nuclear weapons more pathetic than the school yard bully.

And once we come out and say that the United States can no longer rule the world through the threat of violence, what then? We still have to figure out a way for us all to live in harmony with each other and with this planet. The way things seem to be deteriorating, it seems that we are running out of time to find those solutions.

And let’s not forget that it’s not the politicians that we have to convince to stop the war. It;s the people who are making billions of dollars off the war and off the other economic opportunities the U.S. has appropriated for itself and protects with its vast armed forces. Let’s not continue to pretend that a politician job is not represent us but to get re-elected. That takes money, and therefore he who has the gold makes the rules. As long as war is profitable, those making the profit will ensure that there is always a war going on.

Addressing Iraq, especially form the viewpoint of Black Americans who are all too familiar with th heavy hand of power in this country, requires much more than just a superficial discussion about timetable for troop withdrawals. They could take all the “troops” out right now and there would still be any army or “Civilian military contractors”, better known as mercenaries, remaining in Iraq to keep the bloodshed going. Black people have to be forward thinking enough to recognize that this is no longer the same world it was, the good old days of world war are over, because the war machine has grown into a doomsday device and we dare not open Pandora’s box.

If we as an Afrosphere collective are to pick up this issue, let’s not go aat this half-assed.

Yes, I said challenging post, because you challenges all of us.

This challenge is about America’s war on Iraq and the lack of conversation on black blogs about the disguised hypocrisy of America on this critical issue.

Jill, I agree with you, I’m equally as fustrated, like most African Americans on the continuing failure of the American political machine to set a timetable on Iraq. I also agree with you, members of Congress and the political blogs are ignoring African-Americans, as you said, in part, because we have not blogged as much about Iraq as other issues.

Black bloggers should get more vocal about the war. We need to do what Malcolm and Martin taught us, become more international in our conversation. We need to comment of the Iraq war as they did about the War in Vietnam and the war against our people.

I posted a link to a speech ny Martin Luther King, Jr. on YouTube. It’s a great speech. It provides even greater historical context to your post.

Thanks for bringing this critical issue up for discussion on the AfroSphere.

I was a block away from Walter Reed.

They just don’t get it.

I wish you would cross-post this over at MyDD or DailyKos.

I think the Anti-War on the other side of the racial fence just don’t get it with regards to our community, and this war.

They think that the only way to protest this war is to be out on the mall somewhere.

I think Black people don’t do that, by and large, because of the vestiges of the Vietnam War. Black folk watched how those protestor treated the people that came home from Vietnam – a lot of them with our skin color – and they were pissed off. We are a conservative people by nature. Plus, we have always seen the military as a possible way for improvement, not only career wise, but personal wise.

I bet everyone of us knows someone that joined the military, because they were ‘on the edge’, and it could have gone ‘either way’ with them and a parent took them down to the recruiting station, or the judge gave them a choice between the military and jail. And, the military wound up being the thing that gave their life definition.

I have to admit – if we weren’t in this god awful war, I might have suggested to my nephew that he join the military. I think that it would possibly do him some good. My niece wanted to go to dental school, and the only ones who would pay for all of it was the Army. We begged and pleaded with her not to do it, so she’s put it off.

We do our protesting by convincing our sons and daughters that they shouldn’t sign up to be slaughtered in this debacle. We do our protesting with that. We DO however truly respect anyone in uniform, and I think that we suspect that those on the other side of the aisle, only give lip service about respecting the troops.

Black folk were out ahead of the curve. We were the only ones asking about Osama Bin Laden, and said this was a war about oil, and called unpatriotic, as is usually the case for people who don’t jump on the patriotic bandwagon.

We would have to be completely out of Iraq for me to convince anyone to join up with the Army.

Someone complained about Obama’s speech about the Armed Services and him saying that we needed more troops.

We are hurting. We need more troops. The ONLY reasons that we have the troop levels we have now are:
1. The BACKDOOR DRAFT
2. The HUGE re-signing bonuses
3. Allowing rural terrorists (White Supremacists) that otherwise would have been vetted out, to join
4. Allowing urban terrorists (Gang Bangers) that otherwise would have been vetter out, to join
5. Allowing actual CRIMINALS, yes, CRIMINALS to join

And, even with all of this, our troop levels are spread thin.

Before I encourage anyone to go into the military, we’d have to get out of Iraq. And, I know I’m not alone in thinking along those terms.