Bring War Dollars Home by Closing Down Bases (Amen to that!)

[raccoon]

Published on Friday, April 1, 2011 by Foreign Policy in Focus

On the eighth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, U.S. fighter planes took off to start yet another military action -- this time, in Libya. A recent Gallup poll found that only 47 percent of Americans approved of military action in Libya, the lowest level of support for military intervention in 40 years. At the same time, U.S. President Barack Obama has sent Congress a budget that includes $1.2 trillion dollars for military and security expenditures. Clearly, Americans are weary of war, especially during an economic crisis that has threatened jobs, health plans, and pensions most families need to survive.

The hopeful news is that a grassroots movement of ordinary people across U.S. towns and cities has launched the New Priorities campaign, uniting under the demand to “bring the troops and war dollars home” by cutting defense spending instead of benefits, jobs, and basic government services. Worldwide actions are also being planned for the Global Day of Action on Military Spending on April 12th to shine a light on egregious amounts of military spending by the world’s governments. Central to these efforts must include demands to shut the 1,000-plus U.S. military bases in over 46 countries.

Bases are the most visible structures of the U.S. drive to maintain global military hegemony. Yet for most Americans, bases remain out of sight and outside the national discourse on war. Many don’t know about the enormous footprint of U.S. military installations around the world and how they undermine the lives and aspirations of the people who live directly in their shadow. Ending U.S. wars is essential, but closing down foreign bases is even more critical to dismantling U.S. militarism and global hegemony.

(snip)

We must call for the defunding of U.S. bases and war games, and join this global people’s struggle for peace and sovereignty.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/04/01

[walerosco]

1. K & R

With all this talk about cutting the deficit, we need to start cutting defense spending now. Lets bring those troops home in intact(mind and body) and not in body bags

[ladjf]

2. No, we can't do that. It's too smart of an idea. We specialize in

dumb moves. nt

[Mnemosyne]

3. Hear, hear! K&R n/t

[Igel]

4. Depends on the base.

A lot of them fall into two big categories: Technical support or logistic support.

The technical support bases are things like radar bases for uplinking to satellites, for monitoring space junk. They have a physical plant that's not too large, they have a staff that's not too large. Close those and you need to pay some others to do the job. That's called outsourcing. It also means that some of the communications channels that sensitive materials go through are controlled by allies. Or not.

The logistical bases are sometimes merged with the above. They're fueling depots for navy ships, airbases for refueling and maintaining aircraft. A lot of them aren't free-standing, they're part of allies' infrastructure and piggy-back on that.

That's most of the bases. Small little things, where replacing them might save money by employing cheaper, foreign labor. Where replacing them might necessitate other, larger, expenses.

It's the large bases that attract everybody's attention--and let people think that they're all large. Many are the result of half-hearted treaty observance. You know, the "law of the land" that some people want, when they think it's a good idea, to trump the Constitution. Nonetheless, they are binding. We wanted Japan to have no standing army; we put our troops there. We became part of NATO, and part of the defense was of Europe, so we put troops there. We never actually finished the Korean War, so we have troops there.

Often it's not so much "the people" that want the US bases closed (which implies that sometimes it is, of course); often it's a small group of people who believe that they and only there are the "one true people" of the country, even if they're just a small percentage, because only they truly understand what everybody else would want if they were just smart enough to be as bright and superior as that small percentage.