Does Obama have guts for global military change? Guam=Okinawa
Thu Jul 17, 2008 at 10:52:01 PM PDT
Does Obama have the guts to lead a change in our global military strategy? Are Iraq and Afghanistan merely giant pimples on a much greater obscenity that seems too big to focus on?
Per Al-Jazeera, as part of new defense strategy, the United States is currently spending billions of dollars to turn Guam into the new Okinawa.Two thirds of the estimated cost of $15 billion will be to relocate 8,000 soldiers from Okinawa. But it's the hardware that has the locals worried.
US building up Guam base
On the apron, old but still operational B-52 bombers... were standing by....The US outpost will see a whole array of the latest military hardware including nuclear-powered Trident submarines which can fire Tomahawk cruise missiles and unmanned Global Hawk spy aircraft.....By next year, the base will receive the latest state-of-the-art F-22 fighter jets, reflecting Guam’s strategic defence position in a volatile part of the world.
This buildup is a response to the perceived increased threat by North Korea and China, which has doubled its defense spending in recent years.
Lieutenant general Daniel Leaf, deputy commander of the US Pacific Command, said: "We are here to provide military defence and to deter aggressive activities by any group, terrorists or national entity... We want peace but we are also committed to overall well-being of the pacific community."
The US is sending a strong message to China: There's only one superpower left in this world and don't you forgit it.
A small group of Chamorrus, Guam's indigenous people, are less than enthused about having their tiny island take center stage in global geopolitics. They are worried that their new military high profile makes them a potential target.
Rumbo Chedo, a Chamorru activist, said his biggest concern were his children's safety.
"The whole of al-Qaeda and terrorists know that the military is moving here and expanding themselves," he told Al Jazeera.
Debbie Quinata, another Chamorru activist, said: "I think we really need to look at this picture and who are the terrorists because at this point they're terrifying us, they’re terrifying me, they’re terrifying my family."
There's another reason the people of Guam are less than enthused: they are being used to solve a messy problem. Okinawa in recent years has grown increasingly angered by the conduct of US servicemen. Two US servicemen were arrested in Okinawa in February 2008 for different incidents of rape:
Resentment towards the US military presence erupted this month following the arrest of a marine for the alleged rape of a 14-year-old girl on the island of Okinawa, home to more than half of the 50,000 US troops in Japan.
Since then, US soldiers on the island have been arrested for trespassing and drink driving, and another is being questioned about the alleged rape of a Filipino woman in a hotel room.
The rape allegation has echoes of the 1995 gang rape of a 12-year-old girl by three US servicemen, which brought 85,000 people on to the streets in protest and international attention to the US base.
Rice says sorry for US troop behaviour on Okinawa as crimes shake alliance with Japan
Though the new commander of US forces in Japan, Lieutenant General Edward Rice, enacted a curfew of and promised "zero tolerance" of US servicepeople's crimes, the locals are skeptical:
"This has been going on since the US began occupying our island decades ago," said Chie Miyagi, a schoolteacher and activist against the base. "The US military apologises and promises us that it won't happen again, but it always does. The government and the rest of Japan don't really care about how we feel. If it was their daughters who were being raped, I'm sure they would react differently."
Campaigners believe the marines on Okinawa will soon revert to their old ways once the curfew is lifted...
Okinawa is sick of the US presence, even as it depends almost completely on it for economic survival. The current economic downturn has muted protests, but the world is changing quickly. Japan and China are in the middle of a coming-together process. China and Taiwan are also embracing each other. A new economic powerhouse of joint agreements is being formed. The Japanese will not need the United States in the same way. What easier way to solve the problem of disenchanted hosts to the US military than relocating 8,000 of them to a US territory that has zero political influence in the US?
[Miyagi's] anger is widely shared in Ginowan, the Okinawan city that is host to a sprawling marine corps air station. After the 1995 rape, in an attempt to relieve tension, the US and Japan agreed to relocate the air station to the island's sparsely populated north-eastern coast, but the plan is increasingly opposed by residents there.
The plan, scheduled for completion by 2014, would also see about 8,000 marines sent to Guam, a US territory in the Pacific about 3,700 miles south-west of Hawaii, in one of the biggest realignments of US troops for decades.
It makes strategic sense to relocate such a sizeable force and such military hardware to Guam, perhaps. But the $15 billion price tag, at a time when so many in the US are uninsured and relaying on food pantries to survive, and losing their homes at record rates, may perhaps help us to question our fundamentals. Per Professor Jules Dejour:
The main sources of information on these military installations (e.g. C. Johnson, the NATO Watch Committee, the International Network for the Abolition of Foreign Military Bases) reveal that the US operates and/or controls between 700 and 800 military bases Worldwide.
In this regard, Hugh d’Andrade and Bob Wing's 2002 Map 1 entitled "U.S. Military Troops and Bases around the World, The Cost of 'Permanent War'", confirms the presence of US military personnel in 156 countries.
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).
The Worldwide Network of US Military Bases
Now Guam will taste the fruits of being more than a fueling station.
When will ordinary US citizens become sick of propping up so-called "US interests" at the expense of any reasonable use of their tax money to make their own lives better?
Will Obama have the guts to start a real dialogue about just what the hell we are doing with military bases in 63 countries?
Dumb wars are dumb. An empire constructed to solidify the power and wealth of America's 1%, and that of their wealthy friends in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, etc, is dumb, too, if you are the taxpayer paying for it, and the soldier who's pissing his life away overseas, away from his family for it. Or even worse, dying for it.
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