Wasteful Foreign Deployments

Let's take on a different topic today and give health care reform a little break with the exception of the closing paragraph below. As you probably know, the Pentagon is always one of the biggest budget items that the Federal government spends our tax dollars on. In fact, I recently read that the United States spends more on defense than the rest of the word combined. In order to attain a 50% decrease in Washington spending, return that unused wealth back to taxpayers and thus, increasing freedom, the Pentagon budget would have to be cut significantly.

A July 3, 2009 article in the Tampa Bay Times, which was a reprint form the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, provided some insights on first steps to getting this spending under control. The article cited the 2007 statistics from the Department Of Defense:

• The United States had 295,003 military personnel in 150 countries as of the end of 2007
• This excluded 218,500 personnel in Iraq and 25,240 personnel in Afghanistan
• There were U.S. 57,080 troops in Germany
• There were 32,803 troops in Japan
• There were 27,014 troops in Korea
• There were 9,925 in Great Britain
• There were 9,855 in Italy
• There were 1,594 in Turkey
• There were 1,286 in Spain

Let's do some math. If we subtract the troop levels above (excluding Iraq and Afghanistan) from the Department of Defense total, we end up with 155,446 troops stationed in 143 countries. This leads to an estimated deployment per country of 1,087. If we assume that none of these 143 countries have more than Spain, the last country listed in the article, then we probably have about 1,000 troops stationed in each of those 143 countries. While some of these troops are undoubtedly stationed in our embassies for embassy protection, I doubt we need a deployment of 1,000 troops per embassy.

Thus, the first step in reducing Pentagon costs is to return almost of these troops to the U.S. Why do we need 57,000 troops in Germany? They serve no strategic need now that the Iron Curtain has fallen and the Cold War is over. 32,000 troops in Japan are not going to deter China's military and do we really think the Japanese will attack Pearl Harbor again? Our troops in South Korea are only a small percentage of the South Korean army, let them defend their own country. Removing our troops might even ease tensions on the Korean peninsula. I cannot imagine what almost 10,000 troops are doing in Great Britain. Stationing thousands of troops in over a hundred countries serves no purpose except to waste our tax dollars.

Returning these troops will not make America any less safe. I doubt that the 57,000 troops in Germany are any kind of terrorist deterrent. Let's save the money and get focused on the real military threats, not worry about having troops in 150 countries. It is a ridiculous, expensive and ineffective military strategy in light of the terrorism threats in the world today. This strategy is embodied by Step 30 in the book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government".

A short sidebar on health care reform debate as promised. I loved a comment from an American citizen I saw today who was on a tear while discussing Obama's health care reform program with the citizen's Congressman. Basically his statement was that why did Obama take six months to pick out a dog for his kids while he wants to pass a trillion dollar (or more) health care reform program in four weeks? I could not have said it better. See some of my previous posts for a more detailed discussion.