{"id":396586,"date":"2019-02-20T21:52:45","date_gmt":"2019-02-20T20:52:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-us-military-is-everywhere\/"},"modified":"2019-02-20T21:52:45","modified_gmt":"2019-02-20T20:52:45","slug":"the-us-military-is-everywhere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-us-military-is-everywhere\/","title":{"rendered":"The US Military Is Everywhere"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<figure id=\"attachment_32664\" style=\"width: 500px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/watson.brown.edu\/costsofwar\/files\/cow\/imce\/papers\/2019\/US%20Counterterror%20War%20Locations,%202017-18,%20Smithsonian_Costs%20of%20War%20upright.pdf\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/FireShot-Screen-Capture-021-costsofwarupright_small_jpg-WEBP-Image-498-\u00d7-335-pixels-i1_wp_com_www_tomdispatch_com_images_managed_costsofwaru.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"334\" class=\"size-full wp-image-32664\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/FireShot-Screen-Capture-021-costsofwarupright_small_jpg-WEBP-Image-498-\u00d7-335-pixels-i1_wp_com_www_tomdispatch_com_images_managed_costsofwaru.png 500w, https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/FireShot-Screen-Capture-021-costsofwarupright_small_jpg-WEBP-Image-498-\u00d7-335-pixels-i1_wp_com_www_tomdispatch_com_images_managed_costsofwaru-300x200.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 85vw, 500px\"\/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\"><i>Stephanie Savell, Costs of War Project, originally published in the February issue of Smithsonian magazine (click for larger version)<\/i><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Most Americans would say we have a military for national defense and security. But our military is not a defensive force. Defense is not its ethos, nor is it how our military is structured. Our military is a power-projection force. It is an offensive force. It is designed to take the fight to the enemy. To strike first, usually justified as \u201cpreemptive\u201d or \u201cpreventive\u201d action. It\u2019s a military that believes \u201cthe best defense is a good offense,\u201d with leaders who believe in \u201cfull-spectrum dominance,\u201d i.e. quick and overwhelming victories, enabled by superior technology and firepower, whether on the ground, on the seas, in the air, or even in space or cyberspace.<\/p>\n<p>Thus the \u201cglobal war on terror\u201d wasn\u2019t a misnomer, or at least the word \u201cglobal\u201d wasn\u2019t. Consider <a href=\"https:\/\/original.antiwar.com\/Stephanie_Savell\/2019\/02\/19\/us-counterterror-missions-across-the-planet\/\">the article below today from TomDispatch.com by Stephanie Savell<\/a>. Our military is involved in at least 80 countries in this global war, with no downsizing of the mission evident in the immediate future (perhaps, perhaps, a slow withdrawal from Syria; perhaps, perhaps, a winding down of the Afghan War; meanwhile, we hear rumblings of possible military interventions in Venezuela and Iran).<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s a sad reality: U.S. military troops and military contractors\/weapons dealers have become America\u2019s chief <a href=\"https:\/\/bracingviews.com\/2015\/01\/20\/special-forces-americas-jesuits\/\">missionaries<\/a>, our ambassadors, our diplomats, our aid workers, even our \u201cpeace\u201d corps, if by \u201cpeace\u201d you mean more weaponry and combat training in the name of greater \u201cstability.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ve become a one-dimensional country. All military all the time.<\/p>\n<p><i>William J. Astore is a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF). He taught history for fifteen years at military and civilian schools and blogs at <a href=\"https:\/\/bracingviews.com\/\">Bracing Views<\/a>. He can be reached at <a href=\"mailto:wastore@pct.edu\">wastore@pct.edu<\/a>. Reprinted from <a href=\"https:\/\/bracingviews.com\/\">Bracing Views<\/a> with the author\u2019s permission.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/AWCBlog\/~3\/8jkgW4RbMwI\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Stephanie Savell, Costs of War Project, originally published in the February issue of Smithsonian magazine (click for larger version) Most Americans would say we have a military for national defense and security. But our military is not a defensive force. Defense is not its ethos, nor is it how our military is structured. Our military [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2519,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-396586","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2519"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=396586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396586\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}