December 20, 2012--Base Structure Report

In 2011, the Pentagon's "Base Structure Report" listed 611 U.S. military bases scattered around the world. This did not include the then 411 bases in Afghanistan, the 88 in Iraq, or the six in Kuwait. Nor did it list at least a half dozen more in Saudi Arabia or the covert drone bases in Pakistan.

All told there are more than 1,000 U.S. military installations worldwide, including family housing complexes, schools, resort hotels for R&R purposes, and 172 golf courses!

Never in the history of humankind has any other empire had so many overseas bases nor spent so much money--in absolute or percentage terms--on extending its power globally.

Just maintaining these bases costs about $45 billion a year, and this does not include what we spend on the troops and their families stationed there nor the cost of new construction. At the moment, for example, we have 80,000 American troops stationed in Germany and the rest of Europe. In spite of the fact that the Cold War ended in 1991.

All tolled, annually America spends more on "defense" than all the other nations of the world combined.

I repeat--we spend more on our military than all the other nations of the world combined, including Russia and China.

If we are looking for places to cut our federal budget, before cutting food stamps and medical research and homeland security, maybe we should look at our nearly trillion-dollar-a-year Pentagon budget.