In what is becoming a virtually annual event, the House Armed Services Committee has once again blocked a proposal in the 2016 military spending bill to begin preparing for a round of base closures in 2017.
The Pentagon has argued for years that multiple bases inside the United States are completely unnecessary, but the concern about losing a lucrative base in their own district has kept much of Congress averse to any talk of closures. The last such closures were in 2005.
The Armed Services Committee, interestingly enough, allowed language to remain in the bill calling for the Pentagon to assess its “excess capacity,” but is not letting them address it where it clearly already exists.
Rep. Mac Thornberry (R – TX) argued that the 2005 closures ended up costing more than the Pentagon projected, and that they didn’t start to “break even” on a budget basis for years.
The alternative, it seems, is to simply leave huge, unnecessary bases funded and manned with a skeleton crew, basically forever, to avoid the politically unpopular choice of closing them and the equally unpopular questions to Pentagon brass about how to mothball such facilities in a cost effective way.
Kinda miss the "good old days," when all it took to close a base was an order from the SecDef. That happened to a USAF base in my hometown back in the 1960s. No doubt the mayor and city council squealed like stuck pigs (I was just a kid back then, so I don't know for certain), but regardless of the squeal level the order stood and the base was closed.
Same thing happened in the mid 90's when they closed Plattsburgh Air Force Base – a former SAC base. The town parceled up the property and it is now a successful industrial complex – not to mention an operating (and growing) airport. Phish even held a concert there for 70,000+ attendees which put over $20M into the local coffers. There is life after closure…and money to be made.
How about closing the majority of overseas bases, especially in countries wherein we have no business having those bases and where the population strongly opposes them? We don't need troops in Okinawa, the Mideast, nor in EU nations.
And, certainly, we don't need any troops in Ukraine; besides, that violates the Minsk 2.0 Accords, which bans foreign troops on Ukrainian soil.
The Joint Chiefs are drunk on power! "Over grown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty." George Washington
Polls: Americans Are Sick of the War On Terror, War On Drugs … And All of the Other Failed U.S. Wars May 1, 2014
Americans Turn Anti-War The American people are now overwhelmingly opposed to more war in Ukraine, Syria, Iran and elsewhere. A new Wall Street Journal/NBC poll shows: Americans in large numbers want the U.S. to reduce its role in world affairs even as a showdown with Russia over Ukraine preoccupies Washington …. In a marked change from past decades, nearly half of those surveyed want the U.S. to be less active on the global stage, with fewer than one-fifth calling for more active engagement—an anti-interventionist current that sweeps across party lines.
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/05/polls-amer…
US Pursues 134 Wars Around the World – September 17, 2014
The US is now involved in 134 wars or none, depending on your definition of war …The White House spent much of last week trying to figure out if the word "war" was the right one to describe its military actions against the Islamic State. US Secretary of State John Kerry was at first reluctant: "We're engaged in a major counterterrorism operation," he told CBS News on Sept. 11. "I think war is the wrong terminology and analogy but the fact is that we are engaged in a very significant global effort to curb terrorist activity… I don't think people need to get into war fever on this. I think they have to view it as a heightened level of counter terrorist activity." – Global Post
http://www.thedailybell.com/news-analysis/35654/U…
The Worldwide Network of US Military Bases The Global Deployment of US Military Personnel By Jules Dufour, December 24, 2013
The US Military has bases in 63 countries. Brand new military bases have been built since September 11, 2001 in seven countries. In total, there are 255,065 US military personnel deployed Worldwide. These facilities include a total of 845,441 different buildings and equipments. The underlying land surface is of the order of 30 million acres. According to Gelman, who examined 2005 official Pentagon data, the US is thought to own a total of 737 bases in foreign lands. Adding to the bases inside U.S. territory, the total land area occupied by US military bases domestically within the US and internationally is of the order of 2,202,735 hectares, which makes the Pentagon one of the largest landowners worldwide (Gelman, J., 2007).
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-worldwide-networ…
US Military and Clandestine Operations in Foreign Countries – 1798-Present Global Policy Forum December 2005
Note: This list does not pretend to be definitive or absolutely complete. Nor does it seek to explain or interpret the interventions. Information and interpretation on selected interventions will be later included as links. Note that US operations in World Wars I and II have been excluded.
https://www.globalpolicy.org/us-military-expansio…