Numbers Game
By Jeffrey Page
We’re fighting in Afghanistan. We’re fighting in Iraq. Now we’re fighting in Libya. But don’t get us wrong; we don’t want to be the world’s cop. Will there be a fourth?
Recently, the Arab League put out a call for someone to deal with Qaddafi, and the clear message was that “someone” did not refer to members of the Arab League. Then the UN called for a no-fly zone over Libya.
Before you could utter the oxymoronic “desert quagmire” there we were in the Libyan sky with the French and British.
Right or wrong – wrong, I think – the United States did nothing about the murderous Qaddafi for his role in the bombing of Flight 103 over Lockerbie, but here we are 23 years later, serving as the Hessian for the colonel’s unhappy neighbors.
So where next?
All you have to do to figure that out is get your hands on a globe, give it a good spin and stop the turning with your index finger. We probably can have a war wherever you’re pointing because chances are we already have troops there or nearby World cop? Not us.
Some Americans go to bed hungry. Some can’t afford the price of a prescription medication. Some send their kids to crummy schools. But we spend countless millions in posting our military in 149 countries on every continent. Some are embassy guards. All are combat-ready troops.
Not the cop of the earth? Really? Here’s some information you might find interesting from the Defense Department’s “Active Duty Military Personnel Strengths by Regional Area and by Country” as of Sept. 30, 2010.
–We have 9,646 troops in Italy, 1,379 in Djibouti.
–We have 16 in Romania, 8 in Albania, and 7 in Lithuania.
–We have 110 in Thailand. We have 133 in Greenland. We have 442 in Holland and 275 in Egypt.
–We have 11 in Ghana, 44 in the Bahamas. We have 22 in Nigeria, 19 in Somalia.
–We have 1,252 stationed in Belgium.
–We have 53,951 in Germany, 1,530 in Turkey, and 15 in Haiti.
–We have 1,240 in Spain.
–We have 10 in Slovakia, 8 in Slovenia.
–We have 9,229 in Britain, 36 in Liberia, 17 in Uruguay.
–We have 703 in Portugal, 24 in El Salvador.
–We have 15 troops in Kazakhstan, 11 in Kyrgyzstan, 6 in Tajikistan, 5 in Uzbekistan, 133 in Pakistan, 4 in Turkmenistan, and 105,900 in Afghanistan.
–We’ve got 34,385 stationed in Japan, 1,349 in Bahrain.
–We have 913 at Guantanamo Bay, 338 in Greece.
–We have 35 in Kenya, 47 in Russia. We have 23 in Argentina.
–We have 42 in Peru, 39 in Brazil, 28 in Mexico.
–Hell, we even have 127 in Canada, where I think they like us, and 17 in Venezuela, where I think they don’t.
–We have 6 in Malta, 130 in Australia, 35 in Israel, 555 in Qatar, 239 in Saudi Arabia.
–We have 39 in South Africa, 15 in Yemen.
–We have 403 in Honduras, 2 in Belize, 96,200 in Iraq, 14 in Bolivia.
–We have 16 in Vietnam.
–Figures for South Korea are hard to come by, but it seems we have about 30,000 troops there.
There are more, roo many to mention.
In several places – including Iran, Iceland, Somalia, Palau, Malawi, Liechtenstein and Andorra – we have no troops at all.
The remaining 1,133,699 troops are in the United States and its territories.
Jeff can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com
Tags: Jeffrey Page
March 24th, 2011 at 8:44 am
Great article. Meanwhile, we are being told how financially ill we are. We need to heal ourselves first. And my husband’s biggest complaint is why aren’t the countries closest to Libya concerned enough to take care of their own region? Maybe Libya doesn’t present much of a threat.
March 24th, 2011 at 10:47 am
Excellent piece, Jeff. It seems as though the real lessons learned from the war in Vietnam are forgotten more and more with the passage of time. In fact, the only thing we tend to hear about that war now is that Americans “turned their backs” on returning veterans….but only after spitting at them first. We are paying the price for that distortion of history as our leaders continue to commit our troops to brutal combat in Iraq and Afghanistan….and now to the bombing of Libya. In this regard President Obama is following in the footsteps of George W. Bush. Is this any way to spread democracy?
March 24th, 2011 at 11:11 am
Mike, thanks for bringing up the business about soldiers being spat upon as they returned from Vietnam. My offer still stands: I’ll buy lunch for the first person to produce documented, contemporaneous accounts (newspaper story, newsreel, TV news, etc.) of Vietnam returnees being abused this way.