Our Enemy, Ourselves: Ten Common-Sense Suggestions for Making Peace, Not War
NOVANEWS
By William J. Astore, TomDispatch
Activists display signs during a protest against US military action in Syria on April 8, 2017, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Photo: Fibonacci Blue)
Whether the rationale is the need to wage a war on terror involving 76 countries or renewed preparations for a struggle against peer competitors Russia and China (as Defense Secretary James Mattis suggested recently while introducing America's new National Defense Strategy), the US military is engaged globally. A network of 800 military bases spread across 172 countries helps enable its wars and interventions. By the count of the Pentagon, at the end of the last fiscal year about 291,000 personnel (including reserves and Department of Defense civilians) were deployed in 183 countries worldwide, whi...