The recently-announced buildup of U.S. military presence in Australia is unlikely to make the Asia-Pacific country more of a terrorist target, according to terrorism expert and University of Queensland Professor Marianne Hanson.
“In theory, of course, it can be (a target) and it’s quite possible, but you have to see it in context,” Professor Hanson said. There is nothing in particular that makes the new U.S. base standout in the target priorities of terrorists.
The comment is notable first in that it is an implicit acknowledgement that permanent U.S. military installations in nonthreatening countries is one of the primary motivations behind Islamic terrorism, as opposed to the hating-our-freedom line of thought so often proffered by Washington.
Secondly, it isn’t clear the threat of Islamic terrorism was a part of the controversy regarding the newfangled expansion military presence in Australia. Instead, issues of profligacy in times of austerity, needless provocation of China, and realities on the ground at the new base were paramount.
As Brown University Professor Catherine Lutz has said, “The United States has a vast and expensive network of roughly 1000 military bases around the world. To add another in Australia flies in the face both of organized calls from many quarters to reduce that number as well as the certainty that this will stimulate further military competition and spending by China in response.”
“U.S. military base expansion in Guam,” Lutz explained, “has faced much local resistance including lawsuits and protests largely because of land taking, disruption of sacred sites and concerns about environmental damage. In Okinawa, Japan, one of the main issues has been abuse of local women by U.S. Marines posted there.”
Any sense of terror in Darwin will be caused by all those horny Marines chasing after the local women and the locals slipping "salties" (crocs) into their barracks.
Go crocs!
on the bright side maybe now the main stream media might have to report on the raping and killing of girls now that they will be little white girls.
By design, of course this permanent USA base in Australia is expected to attract terrorist attacks. Talk about cognitive dissonance or utter bullshit!
This military outpost will be used as a spring-board into Indonesia, Burma, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines as Obama, another 'war president', ramps up the geopolitical hegemony of empire aligned against China, under the rubric of the 'Global War of/s/on Terror'. No complaints will come from the Military Industrial Complex or the Fed & Wall Street Mobsters — taxpayers & rank-and-file troopers, not so much.
"War is a racket."
– USMC Maj. General Smedley Butler –
Why does Hanson bring the subject up if it does not exist?
It is like the Ten Commandments – you don't have to forbid something that tempts no one.
because it was asked of me. I didn't 'bring the subject up'; it was asked of me by the reporter.
Australia is making a bad mistake.