{"id":8923,"date":"2011-06-14T13:21:52","date_gmt":"2011-06-14T21:51:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/?p=8923"},"modified":"2011-06-14T13:21:52","modified_gmt":"2011-06-14T21:51:52","slug":"around-the-globe-us-military-bases-generate-resentment-not-security","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/?p=8923","title":{"rendered":"Around the Globe, US Military Bases Generate Resentment, Not Security"},"content":{"rendered":"

Writing on the Nation blog<\/a>,\u00a0Katrina vanden Heuvel<\/a> zeroes in on the social and financial costs of U.S. foreign military bases:<\/p>\n

As we debate an exit from Afghanistan<\/a>, it\u2019s critical that we focus not only on the costs of deploying the current force of more than 100,000 troops<\/a>, but also on the costs of maintaining permanent bases long after those troops leave.<\/div>\n
\n

This is an issue that demands a hard look not only in Afghanistan and Iraq, but around the globe\u2014where the US has a veritable empire of bases.<\/p>\n

According to the Pentagon<\/a>, there are approximately 865 US military bases abroad\u2014over 1,000 if new bases in Iraq and Afghanistan are included. \u00a0The cost? \u00a0$102 billion annually\u2014and that doesn\u2019t include the costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan bases.<\/p>\n

In a must-read article<\/a> in the Bulletin of the Atomic Sciences<\/em>, anthropologist Hugh Gusterson points out that these bases \u201cconstitute 95 percent of all the military bases any country in the world maintains on any other country\u2019s territory.\u201d\u00a0 He notes a \u201cbloated and anachronistic\u201d Cold War-tilt toward Europe, including 227 bases in Germany.<\/p>\n

She describes the global anti-bases movement:<\/div>\n

Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) fellow Phyllis Bennis says that the Pentagon and military have been brilliant at spreading military production across virtually every Congressional district so that even the most anti-war members of Congress are reluctant to challenge big Defense projects.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut there\u2019s really no significant constituency for overseas bases because they don\u2019t bring much money in a concentrated way,\u201d says Bennis. \u00a0\u201cSo in theory it should be easier to mobilize to close them.\u201d \u00a0What is new and heartening, according to Bennis, is that \u201cthere are now people in countries everywhere that are challenging the US bases and that\u2019s a huge development.\u201d<\/p>\n

[…}<\/p>\n

IPS has worked diligently not only with allies abroad but also in the US to promote a more rational military posture with regard to bases. \u00a0Other active groups include the American Friends Service Committee and the Fellowship of Reconciliation<\/a>, the latter focusing on bases in Latin America.<\/p>\n

In 2010, IPS mobilized congressional opposition to the building of a new base in Okinawa by working with groups in the US and in Japan. \u00a0This campaign included the creation of a grassroots coalition of peace, environmental and Asian American groups called the Network for Okinawa<\/a>, a full-page ad<\/a> in the Washington Post<\/em>, articles in various progressive media, and a series of congressional visits. \u00a0(The East Asia-US-Puerto Rico Women\u2019s Network Against Militarism<\/a> also played a key role, linking anti-base movements in Okinawa, Guam, Puerto Rico and Hawaii.)<\/p>\n

Yes, that’s right.\u00a0 U.S. bases in Hawai’i are foreign bases in an occupied country.\u00a0 As Thomas Naylor writes in Counterpunch “Why Hawai’i is Not a Legitimate State – What the Birthers Missed” <\/a>(There’s a typo in the title of the original article.):<\/p>\n

Notwithstanding a series of clever illegal moves by the U.S. government, Hawaii cannot be considered a legally bona fide state of the United States.\u00a0 In 1898 the United States unilaterally abrogated all of Hawaii\u2019s existing treaties and purported to annex it on the basis of a Congressional resolution.\u00a0 Two years later the U.S. illegally established the so-called Territory of Hawaii on the basis of the spurious Organic Act.\u00a0 After a period of prolonged belligerent occupation by the U.S., Hawaii was placed under United Nations Charter, Article 73, as a \u201cnon-self-governing territory\u201d under the administrative authority of the United States.\u00a0 Then in 1959 the U.S. falsely informed the U.N. that Hawaii had become the 50th state of the United States after an illegal plebiscite.\u00a0 Among those allowed to vote in this invalid election were members of the U.S. military and their dependents stationed in Hawaii.\u00a0 In other words, Hawaii\u2019s occupiers were permitted to vote on its future.<\/p>\n

[…}<\/p>\n

Hawaii became an alleged state of the United States as a result of a foreign policy based on full spectrum dominance and imperial overstretch \u2013 the same foreign policy employed by Obama over a century later in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, and Palestine.<\/p>\n


\n<\/span><\/span><\/h1>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Writing on the Nation blog,\u00a0Katrina vanden Heuvel zeroes in on the social and financial costs of U.S. foreign military bases: As we debate an exit from Afghanistan, it\u2019s critical that we focus not only on the costs of deploying the current force of more than 100,000 troops, but also on the costs of maintaining permanent … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Around the Globe, US Military Bases Generate Resentment, Not Security”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[159,56],"tags":[2409,2406],"class_list":["post-8923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-the-news","category-pacific","tag-movements-resistance","tag-women"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8923"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8923"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8923\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8925,"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8923\/revisions\/8925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}