The Sun Never Sets on the American Empire

The February 2008 issue of American Legion Magazine has an article entitled “Over There: Where In The Word We Are” by Alan W. Dowd. The article isn't available online yet. The author has a website here. His earlier articles are accessible but not this current one.

The United States has nearly half a million troops stationed in 144 countries. We have the obvious ones — 168,000 troops in Iraq, 27,114 in South Korea and 24,800 in Afghanistan. The article doesn’t list all 144 countries but here are a few of the others:

We have a logistics unit in Singapore that enables U.S. Navy vessels to perform exercises. We have 240 Navy and Air Force personnel in Diego Garcia (yes it’s a place, not a person). We've got fifty thousand troops in Japan; just 711 in Australia.

In addition to Iraq we have troops in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.

And we’re all over Europe with 58,000 troops in Germany and over ten thousand in the U.K. and Italy. We have a somewhat smaller presence in Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Holland, Kosovo/Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Oh, and Turkey, Romania, Greece and Bulgaria. And Greenland.

We also have a strong presence in Latin America and Africa (mostly Djibouti).

How crucial is all of this? What terrible things would happen if we pulled some (or even all) of our troops out of Portugal? Or Germany? Or Singapore, Djibouti, Greenland, Colombia, Diego Garcia…

Our entire infrastructure is crumbling, we’re hundreds of billions of dollars in debt, and we have American troops stationed in 144 countries. Is this right?

cross-posted at Bring It On!