{"id":10058,"date":"2011-06-13T09:17:13","date_gmt":"2011-06-13T17:17:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=10058"},"modified":"2011-06-13T09:17:13","modified_gmt":"2011-06-13T17:17:13","slug":"draw-down-empire-not-just-afghan-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2011\/06\/13\/draw-down-empire-not-just-afghan-war\/","title":{"rendered":"Draw Down Empire, Not Just Afghan War"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thenation.com\/blog\/161378\/around-globe-us-military-bases-generate-resentment-not-security\">Katrina vanden Heuvel at <em>The Nation<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>As we\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/opinions\/a-plan-for-afghanistan-declare-victory--and-leave\/2011\/06\/09\/AGz8LrNH_story.html\">debate an exit from Afghanistan<\/a>, it\u2019s critical that we focus not only on the costs of deploying the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/world\/national-security\/cost-of-war-in-afghanistan-will-be-major-factor-in-troop-reduction-talks\/2011\/05\/27\/AGR8z2EH_story.html\">current force of more than 100,000 troops<\/a>, but also on the costs of maintaining permanent bases long after those troops leave.<\/p>\n<p>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<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thebulletin.org\/web-edition\/columnists\/hugh-gusterson\/empire-of-bases\">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<p>In a\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.thebulletin.org\/web-edition\/columnists\/hugh-gusterson\/empire-of-bases\">must-read article<\/a> in the Bulletin of the Atomic Sciences, 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 \u00a0He notes a \u201cbloated and anachronistic\u201d Cold War-tilt toward Europe, including 227 bases in Germany.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Amen. One can easily view the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationaljournal.com\/nationalsecurity\/national-security-insiders-prefer-modest-withdrawal-from-afghanistan-20110612\">current timidity<\/a> on the slow, surgical removal of fixed fractions of U.S. troops from Afghanistan as overly modest. But the extent of the restricted debated in this country about foreign policy becomes even more brazen once we recall what the debate <em>should<\/em> include: retracting our 1,000+ base, 135 some odd country military empire.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Katrina vanden Heuvel at The Nation: As we\u00a0debate an exit from Afghanistan, it\u2019s critical that we focus not only on the costs of deploying the\u00a0current force of more than 100,000 troops, but also on the costs of maintaining permanent bases long after those troops leave. This is an issue that demands a hard look not [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":86,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-10058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/86"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10058"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10058\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10060,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10058\/revisions\/10060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10058"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=10058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}