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The thing to remember about freedom is that it is not given, it is taken

-Scott Adams

What is the Purpose of the Military?

A recent poll shows that 74% of Americans say we should have troops deployed to Japan.

However, less than 60% of those polled said they believe U.S. forces should remain in place until civil order is restored in Iraq.

Now, by a show of hands, who sees something wrong with this? I am trying really hard to reconcile this – I guess so long as Americans aren’t dying, we just don’t care whether it actually makes any sense to keep hundreds of thousands of American troops forward-deployed. There has been talk over the years of eliminating these deployments, or at least reducing them, but they are still out there.

A 1998 publication by the Cato Institute gave some numbers regarding forward-deployed troops between the end of the Cold War and the new War on Terror. Of course, some of these things are a little out of date (my major complaint with Cato), but the point remains. Why exactly do we have more than 35,000 troops in Japan? Where else could they be? Iraq?

Home, maybe?

Posted by Wulf on July 24, 2005 at 12:26 AM

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Comments

No doubt! Since Japan is prohibited from maintaining an offensive military, I could almost understand that we have troops there for their protection. But what about Germany? Why so many troops in post-unification Germany?

Posted by: rammage at July 24, 2005 8:49 AM

There are 70,000+ US troops in Germany. Why was there opposition in this country to Bush's announcment last year to withdrawing some of them?
He wanted to bring home 12,500 troops of the 37,000 in South Korea. Why was this resisted? Why are there 1,700 American troops in Iceland?

Posted by: Wulf at July 28, 2005 2:59 PM