The Awakening: We need a clean slate in the postbellum world.

What is a Base? Is it somehing like the facility in Saudi Arabia that enrages the local population, provides a rallying cry for unhinged Islamists, protects a medieval monarchy from an emerging consensual society in Iraq, and can't be used fully in war? Or is it perhaps like our air facilities in Turkey, where over 8o% of the population demanded that we not use our resources there in the recent war against neighboring Iraq?

In the three-week war, transportation and communications were facilitated from Germany, but such rights were already guarenteed under NATO accords. And what an armored division was doing there anyway is still not clear with "Germany up, Russia in, and us out" in the European mind ---- especially when Austria directed us to keep our military convoys away. Given Mr. Schroeder's recent anti-American campaign ---- and polls revealing that a third of German youth think we may have had a hand in the 9/11 disaster ---- it is hardly a mutually-agreed-upon center for joint defense against a common enemy. In fact, there is no real joint defense; there is no common enemy; and soon there should be no shared depot.

The fact is that the Iraq war proved to us that many of our bases are in the wrong place; and those that aren't too often not could be used. I think under current practice we could better define an existing base as either a nexus for local anti-American resentment or a means of exacting political or financial concessions.

What is an ally Were NATO brothers like France and Germany allies ---- whose UN performances made China seem friendly? Is Greece an ally ---- whose mass anti-American demonstrations were larger than in Cairo or Damascus? Perhaps its Mexico, which opposed our efforts in Iraq and exports 1-2 million of its own people illegally across the border as a means to prevent much-needed radical reform at home. In this context, the current meaning of "ally" too often reads as a state benefiting from American friendship that in turn expresses its thanks by gratuitous expressions of hostility in times of crisis.

What is the United Nations? It cannot stop slaughter in Liberia, as it did not in Rwanda or Serbia. It asks the United States to preempt in Liberia to prevent choas ---- but not in Iraq, when our security and the world's stability were in far greater danger. The only time many of its members ever approve of the idea of democracy is when voting in the General Assembly; horrific regimes like Libya, Syria, and Iran sometimes chair committees on humane causes. France claims it is a powerful nation worthy of a veto on the Security Council, but it is also a mere one state in a new European Union that as yet has no collective voice at the UN. A better definition for the current body is something like the following: an international organization where Western liberal states seek to ingratiate themselves with tyrannies, theocracies, and tribes ---- appeasement winning accolades of justice, while principles earn slanders of racism, colonialism, and imperialism.

What is a military alliance? Is it a bilateral, consensual effort to prevent military aggression? That is not quite the situation in Korea, where intellectuals write revisionist histories blaming us for the conflict, where a young generation demonstrates against our presence; where politicians employ bribery to open dialogue with the enemy North ---- and all the while 38,000 Americans patrol as sitting ducks for Communist artillery. Or is it NATO, where the host city of Brussels seeks to indict American generals as was criminals, and most of the member states spend only half what America does on defense?

We need to redefine quite radically all these concepts......

www.nationalreview.com...

Some aspects of this article I question but thats me. But as a taxpayer and a supporter of our military personnel abroad, I find the article to have much merit and speaks volumes for how many American's feel. Bring the troops home....let nations provide the full weight of their own defense. Withdraw our funding 'favors' and enticements. BRING them HOME.

Please feel free to give your opinions....whether for or against....we are all entitled to our opinions.

regards
seekerof

I think the UK would contribute more ...... but we are a bit short of cash since we gave up the Empire .......
But i wish that we could bring our troops home as well.