BRING OUR BOYS AND GIRLS HOME!

As now the reigning champion of U.S. News and World Report's Debate Club discussion on defense spending involving people like presidential candidate Ron Paul and House Military Readiness Chairman J. Randy Forbes, I was surprised to read in The Japan Times yesterday an article by Tomoko Otake (left) spotlighting a new film on American forces abroad.  To summarize:

  1.  We have 716 military bases abroad.

  2.  We have around 250,000 (Hawaii is not included in this total) troops in 110 countries:

      a.  Afghanistan (102,200)

      b.  Germany (53,526)

      c.  Iraq (49,800)

      d.  Hawaii (42,502)

      e.  Japan (36,708)

      f.  South Korea (27,968)

and even down to China (74), France, (63), Pakistan (42), Russia (41), North Korea (0) and Vietnam (0).

Now, if these countries are paying for our presence, great, for this improves our unemployment number, expands the mind of these deployed individuals and allows us to be on top of things.  But 53,526 in Germany, 36,708 in Japan and 27,968 in South Korea, come on, we won those wars, or at least broke even in Korea.  It pays to lose a war, as we have no one in Vietnam.

Entitled "Standing Army," this 74-minute movie is playing in English at Image Forum in Tokyo through May 11. It has won several international awards.  I never heard of it until now.  Is there a Military-Industrial Complex conspiracy to keep this Italian film out of the U.S.?  Noam Chomsky, Gore Vidal and Chalmers Johnson play roles in this documentary.  Johnson (who recently passed away), remarked:

...the bases have come to be the "unit" for the postwar American empire, just as colonies used to be unit for European nations' empires.  

Vidal said that perpetual war for perpetual peace is the American Dream.

Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 67% rating, but reports there are no movie reviews?  Hmmm....   Here is a film clip.  And another.

How this film got started was that in 2007 a mob estimated to be over 100,000 demonstrated in the Italian city of Vincenza to oppose expanding--expanding, mind you--an American military base.  I don't remember this.  We should be pulling out of Italy.  Or should have 56 years ago.  I know about our problems on Okinawa, of course, but, apparently, there is also a growing groundswell of world animosity to our military presence.  Anyway, Enrico Parenti and Thomas Fazi began to do some reporting of this local incident, which mushroomed into a world class (but cheaply made--they had no initial funding) film.

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