Bringing troops home is "hawkish"?

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Antiwar.com
August 20, 2004

Kerry Is Clueless on Bases
Are the Democrats more interventionist than the Bush administration?
by Justin Raimondo

(clip)

The network of U.S. military bases ? more than 750 of them overseas ? 
represents a multi-billion dollar subsidy to the host countries. This kind 
of generosity is the insignia of the American Imperium, which is unique in 
being the only empire in world history where "everything goes out and 
nothing comes in," as the Old Right author Garet Garrett acerbically put it 
in his 1951 essay "Ex America." It isn't only Halliburton that profits from 
base-building and maintenance, but also local businesses.

Yet the impact of the changes may be overblown. As Scott MacMillan points 
out in his excellent round-up of European opinion on the troop realignment 
issue, in Germany the Bush plan calls for withdrawing less than half of 
"the boys." The rest will remain to buy plenty of ice cream, go wild while 
drinking themselves into a stupor, and serve as both a remaining bargaining 
chip and a constant reminder of America's imperial hegemony.

I would also point out that the plan, which calls for repositioning U.S. 
troops in Poland, Romania, and (ugh!) Uzbekistan, is really an expansion of 
our military presence.

U.S. troops are not abandoning Western Europe. Looked at in purely 
geographical terms, they are merely spreading Eastward, toward the War 
Party's main target of the moment: the Middle East. But also much closer to 
Russia, which is another obvious but curiously overlooked aspect of the 
Eastward Ho plan. As South Ossetia heats up ? and, with it, the campaign to 
demonize Vladimir Putin as the reincarnation of Stalin and Hitler ? the 
stage is being set for what may be the surprising second act of the 
preemptive war follies.

There is, in short, a valid critique of the realignment strategy on which 
the repositioning proposal is based. But Kerry is not making it. His 
surprising inversion of the old partisan polarity on this issue certainly 
confuses his supporters, particularly the Anybody But Bush (ABB) 
contingent. But for instant enlightenment, all you have to do is drink 
deeply of Kerry's Kool-Aid. Philip H. Gordon, director of the Center on the 
United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution, must have downed a 
giant draught, because there he is in the Los Angeles Times bibbling to 
Brownstein:

"During the Cold War, bringing troops home was a dovish thing to do. Now, 
it's hawkish."

full: http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=3414