01/05/07
IRAQ EXIT STRATEGY? Please
Ray Mileur
Defending America's Values
If you ever wondered why the Bush administration doesn’t have an exit strategy for Iraq, it’s really very simple. We are not exiting.
The United States is currently building up to 14 different bases in Iraq and based on our history, it is safe to assume that these facilities are not going to go away anytime soon, if ever, unless we start speaking out against the proliferation of foreign U.S. military bases to include these facilities in Iraq.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee observed as long ago as back to 1970, (1) “Once an American overseas base is established it takes on a life of its own. Original missions may become outdated but new missions are developed, not only with the intention of keep the facility going, but often to actually enlarge it. Within the government departments most concern - State and Defense - we found little initiative to reduce or eliminate any of these overseas facilities.”
The Defense Department will admit to over 725 bases overseas in thirty-eight countries, of which it defines 17 as “large installations” that is installations having a “plant replacement value” (PRV), greater than $1.5 billion, 18 as “medium installations”, having a PRV between $800 million and $1.5 billion, and 690 as “small installations”, having a PRV of less than $800 million.
The total PRV of the 725 foreign bases according to the Pentagon has been estimated at $118 billion and you can trust me on this one as well, it’s much more than that.
For us to possess this many military installations and control of foreign real estate by the United States is mind boggling to most Americans at the least.
The sad thing is not only is there not an exit strategy for Iraq, but there is still no exit strategy for our military facilities in South Korea, Okinawa, Japan, Germany, Italy, as well as places like the Balkans, the Persian Gulf, Latin America among others.
This network of bases installations in my opinion constitutes the imperialism and militarism of this country with the primary goal to dominate others, as there can be no military justification to explain the presence of most of these facilities, or are they a sign of military preparedness. If you notice, when we go to war, where do the troops come from?
They come from homeland military bases like, the 101st Airborne Division from Fort Campbell, Kentucky; the 4th Infantry Division from Fort Hood, Texas; the Marines from Camp Pendleton, California, the Marines from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina; the 10th Mountain Division from Fort Drum, New York; and then there are the members of the National Guard and Reserves who go to war from their own hometowns.
So what is the danger of militarism and imperialism? William A. Galston, deputy assistant to President Clinton for domestic policy from 1993-1995 said it best, “Rather than continuing to serve as a first among equals in the postwar international system, the United States would act as a law unto itself, creating new rules of international engagement without agreement by other nations.”
A theologian and scholar of international relations Reinhold Niebuhr predicted that the “winner” of the Cold War would inevitably “face the imperial problem of using power in global terms but from one center of authority, (in this case President Bush), that is so preponderant and unchallenged that its world rule would almost certainly violate basic standards of justice.”
Chalmers Johnson, author of Blowback and the Sorrows of Empire said “Believing we “won” the Cold War we became even less able to recognize our injustices of others and instead assumed that our “good intentions” in world affairs were self-evident. The result of our hubris was to transform our global reach into full-blown imperialism and our concern with national defense into full blown militarism.
We have seen this in the Bush administration come to pass in the Iraq war. Today, we no longer have a “foreign policy,” instead we have a military empire.
This is evident in the results of a major study “The Rule of Power or the Rule of Law,” conducted by two non-profit research organizations, the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research and the Lawyers’ Committee on Nuclear Policy, that analyzed the U.S. response to eight major international agreements.
“The United States has violated, compromised, or acted to undermine in some crucial way every treaty that we have studied in detail,” says Nicole Deller, coauthor of the report. The United States “not only refuses to participate in newly created legal mechanisms, it fails to live up to obligations undertaken in treaties that is ratified.”
According to the report, the United States is “drifting away from regarding treaties as an essential element in global security to a more opportunistic stand of abiding by treaties only when it is convenient.”
In my opinion, as a nation under the leadership of President Bush we have already gone too far, in terms of imperialism and militarism and as citizens we must speak out and call for the return of this nation to a time when we were a first among equals, but we treated the weak with respect and as equals.
If as according to our own Constitution, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”, wouldn’t it hold true, that if all men are created equal, than so would not all countries be created or at least treated as equals.
Our military-industrial complex has grown into exactly the force that President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us against and it is time we speak out against the militarism and imperialism of the United States.
An exit strategy from Iraq? I would suggest not only do we need an exit strategy from Iraq, but we need an exit strategy that includes the dismantling of our empire of military bases on foreign soil and return to a United States military that is a defensive power, existing only to ensure our security, not to dominate the world.
(1) U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Security Agreements and Commitments Abroad, Committee on Foreign Relations, December 21, 1970; quoted in Monthly Review (March 2002)
