We fought and appeared to win a war in Iraq. A dictator who killed thousands of his people was deposed. A country in an area that is critical to us was free to put in a new government that could be friendly to us. Lives were lost and billions spent to accomplish this.
But, we have a president who opposed this war from the beginning. He opposed the surge that allowed our military personnel to overthrow the insurgents and save more American lives. Therefore, he can’t support our victory in word or deed. It’s a burr under his saddle which has many burrs these days. To coddle his far left friends and show he kept at least one campaign promise he brings all the troops home by the end of this year.
I have listed(below) our troop population around the world. Does it make sense to you that we would have 40,000 troops in South Korea and zero in Iraq? Or, 75,000 in Germany and zero in Iraq?
I challenge the need for troops everywhere but Iraq. If this president wants to keep our gains in Iraq he should acknowledge that we no longer need troops in Germany and shift them to Iraq.
You can make a case for troop draw down in Iraq, but you can’t make a case for keeping troops all over the world, everywhere but Iraq.
Unless you just don’t care about all the fine work our troops did in Iraq, the Iraqi people, the threat of Iran, or any of the obvious reasons to keep troops there. You only care about your next election.
There are 6000 military bases and/ or military warehouses located in the U.S. (See Wikipedia, February 2007).
Total Military Personnel is of the order of 1,4 million of which 1,168,195 are in the U.S and US overseas territories.
Taking figures from the same source, there are 325,000 US military personnel in foreign countries:
800 in Africa,
97,000 in Asia (excluding the Middle East and Central Asia),
40,258 in South Korea,
40,045 in Japan,
491 at the Diego Garcia Base in the Indian Ocean,
100 in the Philippines, 196 in Singapore,
113 in Thailand,
200 in Australia,
and 16,601 Afloat.
In Europe, there are 116,000 US military personnel including 75,603 who are stationed in Germany.
In Central Asia about 1,000 are stationed at the Ganci (Manas) Air Base in Kyrgyzstan and 38 are located at Kritsanisi, in Georgia, with a mission to train Georgian soldiers.
In the Middle East (excluding the Iraq war theater) there are 6,000 US military personnel, 3,432 of whom are in Qatar and 1,496 in Bahrain.
In the Western Hemisphere, excluding the U.S. and US territories, there are 700 military personnel in Guantanamo, 413 in Honduras and 147 in Canada.