Pentagon Using Drug Wars as Excuse to Build Bases in Latin America

[Judi Lynn]

Pentagon Using Drug Wars as Excuse to Build Bases in Latin America
Sunday 5 June 2011
by: John Lindsay-Poland, New America Media

Under the auspices of the drug war, the United States is returning to its historical pattern of using Central America and the Caribbean for its own military and strategic purposes.

Even as a growing chorus of voices throughout Latin America argue that military responses to drug trafficking are ineffective against the narcotics trade and exacerbate existing human rights abuses and official corruption, the U.S. military presence in the region is growing.

U.S. military construction in Central and South America has more than doubled in the last two years, while a U.S. buildup on military bases in Colombia continues, despite a Colombian court ruling last summer that struck down an agreement for U.S. use of the bases.

Construction of military facilities is slated for this summer in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Ecuador and Belize, funded from an account for “counter-narco-terrorism” operated by the U.S. Southern Command (SouthCom), the Pentagon’s operations arm for Latin America, according to the Army Corps on Engineers plans. But the biggest Pentagon investments are in Panama and at the U.S. air base in Soto Cano, Honduras.

More:
http://truthout.org/pentagon-using-drug-wars-excuse-build-bases-latin-america/1307294580

[Scuba]

1. Why do they bother?

It's not like they need an excuse, or anyone is doing anything to control military spending that is not justified.

[ixion]

2. and the government uses the Drug 'War' to erode civil liberties in the US

so let's end the charade and try some accountability for once.

[JDPriestly]

3. We will expand and expand our military presence overseas

until we can't borrow money to expand any more, and then one of two things will happened.

Either our military outpost leaders will become aggressive against the US. (As happened with some of the military leaders of Rome who gathered armies outside of Rome and then entered Rome to take charge.)

Or, our country will dissolve into utter economic chaos due to the cost of supporting the wars, and either the whole economic and logistical hot-air-balloon that supports the bases will burst in one huge explosion or the air will simply slowly leak out and the bases will be left in the countries -- memorials to the God of War that put them there in the first place.

In any case, the outcome of our military expansion around the world cannot be good in the long run.

Sooner or later we will be at war with every neighbor and every friend as well as with all our "enemies."

We cannot treat other people, other countries like our outposts for very long and get by with it. Guests and fish stink after three days. Our military goes into other countries as a guest. Sooner or later, the people in the other countries will want us to leave. Better off just not going in the first place. It is a waste of money.

[Demeter]

4. My money is on chaos

It's not like the Corporations will actually PAY for all that military muscle they love to call on to exert and protect their "Constitutional" rights to rape and pillage at home and abroad...not when they have tax-paying servitors who will starve their children to pay for it all.