Swanson -- U.S. Base in Gaza Would Be Modeled on Almost 900 Others
U.S. Base in Gaza Would Be Modeled on Almost 900 Others
The U.S. government (aged 75, 6 feet tall, 275 pounds) plans to build a military base in Gaza. I have some hopes that this will be shockingly offensive to some people in the United States. But it will be modeled on almost 900 other bases that the U.S. military uses outside the United States. This coming weekend, people are protesting military bases all over the world.
Reports The Guardian: “It is unclear who owns the land where the military compound is set to be built, but much of the south Gaza area is currently under Israeli control.”
In fact, not only is it clear that this land is being stolen from its people, but that is the typical model for these bases. They are placed on stolen land, displacing people or replacing people who have been murdered. Typically, as in this case, there is some pretense of law enforcement rather than extreme law violation. Calling a gang a “Board of Peace” and including multiple nationalities in it is a typical level of pretense. In reality, a gang is of course criminal if it commits crimes, not because of its name or size.
This base will be a target and make those around it a target. It will also be a launching point for wars on those immediately around it and those slightly further away. Many U.S. bases around the world, including around the region of Western Asia, are used — among other things — to oppress populations and prop up brutal unpopular governments. In that region, Iran stands out as an island lacking U.S. bases, but any vicious new war that sought to impose a new Shah on Iran would likely do so with the use of new U.S. bases rapidly built in Iran — and, let’s be honest — in large part for the purpose of creating those bases. Regardless, even a quick bombing of Tehran will make Iranian attacks on regional U.S. bases, with the potential of escalating the war, almost certain.
Bases and the war rehearsals they conduct are provocations and facilitate wars. The prepositioning of weapons, troops, communications equipment, aircraft, fuel, etc. make the logistics for U.S. aggression quicker and more efficient. Because the U.S. is continually creating plans for military actions around the world, and because the U.S. military always has some troops “on the ready,” the initiation of combat operations is very simple.
Rather than deterring potential adversaries, U.S. bases mostly antagonize other countries into greater military spending and aggression. Russia, for example, justifies its interventions in Georgia and Ukraine by pointing to encroaching U.S. bases in Eastern Europe. China feels encircled by the more than 250 U.S. bases in the region, leading to a more assertive policy in the South China Sea.
In Western Asia, U.S. bases and troops have provoked terrorist threats, radicalization, and anti-U.S. propaganda. Bases near Muslim holy sites in Saudi Arabia were a major recruiting tool for al-Qaeda.
Scores of U.S. bases are in more than 40 authoritarian and less-than-democratic countries, including Bahrain, Turkey, Thailand, and Niger. These bases are a sign of support for governments implicated in murder, torture, suppressing democratic rights, oppressing women and minorities, and other human rights abuses. Far from spreading democracy, bases abroad often block the spread of democracy.
A new base in Gaza will, like the others, do irreparable environmental damage — even to the hellscape it replaces, and to the Earth as a whole. Most host country agreements were made in the years before many environmental regulations were in place, and even now, the standards and laws that remain standing in the U.S. do not apply to U.S. foreign military bases.
Of course, someone will get rich. Bases cost an exorbitant amount of money. Estimates of the yearly cost of U.S. foreign military bases range from $100 – 250 billion. According to the United Nations, world starvation could be ended for the cost of only $30 billion per year; just imagine what could be done with an additional $70 billion.
Gaza will be no exception to the rule that U.S. troops abroad are afforded impunity to injure and kill those understood to be inferior to them. These crimes carried out directly by U.S. personnel are suffered by powerless populations who have no recourse to obtain justice. Even their narratives are covered up and ignored. U.S. troops commit crimes out of uniform as well. There is a long history on the Japanese island of Okinawa of the local population suffering violent crime at the hands of the U.S. military including kidnapping, rape, and murders of women and girls. Prostitution and drunkenness are often pervasive around U.S. bases.
U.S. bases in dozens of countries constitute mini-Apartheid states, with different rights for base personnel and locals. Moving into the Apartheid state of Stolen-Palestine will not be a big leap for U.S. troops who have been stationed abroad elsewhere, but people who plan to take up residence in the gleaming towers of a gentrified Gaza resort should be prepared to rid themselves of any last shreds of human decency.
https://davidswanson.org/u-s-base-in-gaza-would-be-modeled-on-almost-900-others/
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