You come across some pretty interesting things while surfing the internet, and a while back I came across this girl’s page who calls herself Hot Abercrombie Chick. I’m not entirely sure what the purpose of her blog is (actually, I’m not entirely sure what the purpose of my blog is either…), but she posts a lot of political hot-button issues on there and surprisingly a ton of people discuss and comment on them. Apparently, she’s now decided to run for President as well. One of the ideas she advocates is closing down our overseas military bases so that terrorists will think we’ve stopped meddling in their affairs and leave us alone. Some of her ideas hold merit (more so because they’re not just her ideas, but general ideas that have been floating around for a while that she simply agrees with), such as the government staying out of abortion and gay marriage (obviously I agree with these ideas), and some of her ideas are just ludicrous, like opening our borders for all those who wish to immigrate. However, the danger in this base closing idea is that, on its face, it actually sounds reasonable, and many people who are normally not very pro-military or foreign affairs might just agree with it. In fact, this has to be one of the most dangerous ideas I’ve ever heard. First off, closing our overseas bases and giving up our influence in the rest of the world will not cause terrorists to leave us alone. Terrorists don’t attack American because of our overseas bases, they attack America because they think of us as evil and the Great Satan, and will stop at nothing to totally destroy us, regardless of our overseas bases. I don’t even begin to understand the motivation and ideologies of individuals who are willing to sacrifice their lives to kill other innocent civilians, but I’d be willing to bet that they would only think that by us closing our overseas military bases, that they are winning the war against the US and need to re-double their efforts to totally destroy us. If anything, closing our bases would be a victory for them and a defeat for us. Not only that, but doing so would severely weaken the US and diminish our influence over the rest of the world. Some of the reason that the US is such a great power is because of our incredibly sophisticated and large military force. Now, I’m not saying that we should immediately begin drafting to increase our force and thus our power, but we have to strike a balance. By closing our bases overseas, we’d be destroying such a balance, the same as if we started a draft. We’d also weaken the US’s ability to defend ourselves immensely by closing such overseas bases. They could be considered our first line of defense, and by removing them, we are removing a vital line of defense. Finally, such a move would be akin to reverting back to our isolationist policies and stance after World War I. And, I think we all know what would’ve happened had the US not broken with such policy and gotten involved in World War II…there’d be a nice large country covering most of Europe called Germany, led by the Nazi’s. I’m not saying something similar is likely to happen, but the US needs such bases to ensure that something like that could never happen again. We use our military power globally to exert influence (I’m not saying our influence is always correctly exerted) in order to avert future disasters and wars. Obviously, there are many good reasons to keep such overseas bases, and really no good reasons to get rid of such bases. And yes, if you haven’t guessed it already, I’m a proponent of the military. Not one who thinks the entire country should be drafted, but one who believes that a stronger military, even in today’s day and age, is a good thing for a whole host of reasons. However, I invite anyone who disagrees with a stronger military policy or agrees that closing our bases overseas would be a good thing to respond and share your views and philosophies…
Mar 122004