http://blog.buzzflash.com/contributors/2138-snip-
There's no longer any realistic chance of any superpower invading Germany. But you wouldn't know it considering the American military still owns 235 sites in Germany -- that's not a typo -- and those sites hold more than 50,000 troops. Exact troop numbers are hard to determine, given that many of those stationed in Germany were temporarily shifted to Iraq or Afghanistan, but the Department of Defense's own records show it still owns or leases nearly 10,000 buildings encompassing more than 39 million square footage in Germany (and uses even more sites it doesn't own). Obviously, this is only a fraction of the presence the military had there during its "Cold War" heyday. Still, polls consistently show that a clear majority of Germans want the bases gone and, more to the point, this costs Americans unnecessarily billions.
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The ridiculousness of America's non-conflict defense budget doesn't get nearly enough public scrutiny, mostly because it's an ongoing problem without easy newshooks. The statistics should be familiar, but can't be repeated enough. Roughly 58 percent of the government's discretionary spending goes to the military. The U.S. military currently has troops in 135 of the world's 196 countries. The country could cut more than 80 percent of its military budget and still spend more than any other nation. Polls routinely show the American public grossly underestimates how much of its tax money goes to the military. They also show that the public doesn't realize that, while more than half of all taxes go to defense spending, the Bush Administration made sure that doesn't count Iraq and Afghanistan, which were always funded with separate appropriations. And at a time when conservatives are up in arms about a health-care bill that might cost $1 trillion over 10 years, don't forget the 10-year estimate for Iraq alone is upwards of $2 trillion.
Defense spending hasn't received nearly enough blame for the country's current economic crisis, as it costs taxpayers dearly and handcuffs the government's ability to deal with other problems for years. Even a 10-20 percent cut would go a long way toward paying for domestic priorities or getting deficits in line, and permanent bases are one of many obvious places to cut.
And this is hardly just Germany. The day before American and other officials were celebrating in Berlin, between 20,000-25,000 people took to the streets of Okinawa to protest the DoD's flip-flop on closing a base there. Okinawa has for years been notorious as the site of violence against local women on the part of American personnel, with the 2008 rape of a 14-year-old girl the latest high-profile example. "It has happened over and over again in the past and I take it as a grave case," Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda said at the time. Okinawa's residents have consistently protested having to house tens of thousands of troops and even President Bush, who normally never met a military project he wouldn't back, agreed to close a major base there and to shift some 8,000 personnel off the island. However, a few weeks ago -- on a day when the public and the TV news networks were too busy obsessing over the "balloon boy" who wasn't in a balloon to notice -- the military quietly announced its refusal to comply with that decision, prompting the protests.
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One of the great failures of post-9/11 America is that, more than eight years later, the former site of the World Trade Center remains a giant hole in the ground. It's become less a reminder of that day's tragedy than a reminder that a country that put a man on the moon in less than a decade now struggles to complete anything. Occupying Germany and Japan for six decades, and Korea for five, underscores the same costly inability to close chapters.
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if we were not a military empire we would have more then enough money for universal health care
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