Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases

Associated Press
January 2, 2011

A leading GOP lawmaker on U.S. military policy says he wants American officials to consider establishing permanent military bases in Afghanistan.

Sen. Lindsay Graham of South Carolina says that having a few U.S. air bases in Afghanistan would be a benefit to the region and would give Afghan security forces an edge against the Taliban.

Graham tells NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he wants to see the U.S. have “an enduring relationship” with Afghanistan to ensure that it never falls back into the hands of terrorists.

President Barack Obama plans to begin drawing down American forces in Afghanistan next year and hand over security to Afghan forces in 2014.

Obama has talked about an enduring presence in Afghanistan but not exactly what that would entail. …

www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iFZIGlR7kMiiDL7-4oUyJcofOoNg?docId=cea6b988bdbd46b9b0a7e03a8cc3d4a5

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The Washington Post
By Mari Yamaguchi
December 14, 2010

Japan’s government agreed Tuesday to continue contributing $2.2 billion a year toward the cost of stationing American troops in the country.

Under the agreement with the United States, Japan’s share will remain at the current 188 billion yen ($2.2 billion) through March 2016. The current pact expires next March. …

The flash point in the debate is the southern island of Okinawa, where most of the nearly 100 U.S. facilities in Japan are located. The pending relocation of an unpopular U.S. Marine base on the island has strained relations between the two countries.

Japanese living near U.S. military facilities have long complained about aircraft noise and crime. …

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/14/AR2010121401711.html

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CRIENGLISH.com
November 25, 2010

Bolivia on Wednesday urged fellow Latin American countries to keep U.S. military bases off their soil. Otherwise, it said, peace and democracy in the region will be at risk.

Defense Minister Ruben Saavedra made the remarks at the 9th Conference of Defense Ministers of the Americas in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, which is also attended by U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.

“Bolivia’s position is in the context of a clear governmental policy to defend the sovereignty of the people and the noninterference of other nations, including world powers, in internal policies,” he said.

The Bolivian government is convinced that U.S. or foreign military bases in Latin America and the Caribbean put peace in the region at risk, and endanger democratic order, the minister added.

About 30 countries took part in the conference.

http://english.cri.cn/6966/2010/11/25/2021s606985.htm

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Political Affairs Magazine
by: Akahata
November 14, 2009

About 21,000 Okinawans held a rally on November 8 in Ginowan City demanding the immediate closure of the dangerous U.S. Marine Corps Futenma Air Station and opposing the plan to move it to Henoko to provide a state-of-the-art air base in Okinawa.”

Ginowan is the city that hosts the U.S. Futenma base, but an overwhelming majority of the residents are demanding that the base site be returned to the city so that they can live free of sonic booms from U.S. military aircraft and the danger of plane crashes.

Participants in the rally demonstrated their firm opposition to a new U.S. base being constructed anywhere in Okinawa.

Speaking on behalf of the organizers of the rally, Ginowan Mayor Iha Yoichi urged Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio to take a decisive step to free Okinawans from the unbearable burdens of U.S. bases, the source of their anguish and sufferings, which has continued to exist for more than sixty years.

Mayor Onaga Masatoshi of Naha City stated, “Although I am a conservative, I am sure the majority of Okinawans are united in calling for U.S. bases to be reduced.”

Mayor Noguni Masaharu of Chatan Town, north of Ginowan City, warned that residents nearby the Futenma base can no longer put up with the heavy burden of hosting the base. We also oppose the idea of moving the U.S. Marine Corps operations at Futenma to the U.S. Kadena Air Force Base.” …

www.politicalaffairs.net/japan-okinawans-protest-new-us-marine-base/

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DEBKAfile
November 9, 2010

In the first week of November, directly after the discovery of two explosive parcels mailed from Yemen to the United States, Washington moved a squadron of Predator drones to a secret base at the Yemeni Red Sea port of Al Hodaydah …

Until now, the covert facility – finished in April on a site CIA director Leon Panetta has selected last January – was allotted to US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) units for mounting clandestine raids against Al Qaeda cells deep inside Yemen.

The new deployment of drones elevates American military intervention in Yemen by another notch.

Monday night, Nov. 9, Awlaki himself aired a 25-minute videotape on extremist websites. It was devoted to an unbridled attack on America. Muslims around the world were called upon to kill Americans…

http://www.debka.com/article/9135/

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ABC Online
November 7, 2010

Defence Minister Stephen Smith discusses Australia’s role in Afghanistan and the strengthening of military ties with the US.

STEPHEN SMITH: … the NATO ISAF summit in Lisbon later this month will be dealing very directly with the transition in Afghanistan.

So we’re obviously part of the 47 country international security assistance force. Everyone has agreed we have got to transition to Afghanistan security competence and responsibility. And so Lisbon is a very important both NATO and ISAF summit to start mapping out the transition to Afghan responsibility.

We continue to be of the view that we can do our bit, our job in Oruzgan on the next two to four years training the Afghan National Army and police in Oruzgan province. …

we’ll be saying to the rest of the international community that we are committed to transitioning to Afghan-led security in Afghanistan, that whilst we can’t leave tomorrow, we can’t be there forever.

So we have to train the Afghan National Army, the Afghan national police and the local police forces to be in a position to manage security arrangements themselves.

And this is the strategy and the approach that we have outlined.

BARRIE CASSIDY: Not there forever but you will be there for at least 10 years?

STEPHEN SMITH: Well our current training mission we see being done in two to four years which is consistent with the timetable set by the Afghanistan conference in Kabul earlier this year.

But after that we do envisage the capacity for us to be there in some oversight or embed capacity. Time will tell what the detail and circumstances of that are. …

the United States is conducting what’s called a force posture review, looking at how it positions its forces throughout the world.

It has bases in other countries – Japan for example. It has a presence in the Republic of Korea. And in Australia, of course, we have joint facilities.

So in the course of the United States considering its force posture review, the possibility arises that the United States could utilise more Australia. And that’s very high on the agenda for AUSMIN today. …

… the United States is a significant power. It conducts strategic reviews from time to time as we do. And so you look to the future.

But it’s also making changes to the disposition of its forces throughout the Asia-Pacific, reducing, for example, the number of forces it has in Japan. So it’s looking at those matters.

But we welcome it very much because we want to see the United States engaged in the Asia-Pacific. That’s very important to Australia. It’s very important to stability in our region. We’ve had that stability since the end of World War II, largely as a result of United States presence.

So an enhanced engagement is something we very strongly support, whether that’s, for example, through the United States joining an expanded East Asia Summit or the United States taking part, as Australia did, in the ASEAN Plus defence ministers’ meeting.

All of these things are unambiguously good things for our region and also for Australia.

It’s certainly in our national interest to be very positively disposed to enhancing our engagement in that military and defence cooperation sense.

View a video of this interview or read the transcript here:
www.abc.net.au/news/video/2010/11/07/3059281.htm

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Mainichi Daily News
April 2, 2010

The local community in the U.S. territory of Guam is leaning toward rejecting the planned relocation of about 8,000 U.S. Marines to the island from Okinawa Prefecture.

The local governor, who had initially expressed his willingness to host the troops, is now calling for a delay in the deadline for the relocation, set at 2014.

While Japanese legislators and government officials insisting that U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma be moved out of Japan hope Guam will host a substitute facility, growing anti-base sentiment in the island community has cast a shadow over even the already agreed-upon relocation of some 8,000 Marines.

The recent dispute in Guam over the relocation of Marines suggests that the situation on this resort island is similar to that of Okinawa, where residents are protesting the excessive burden of hosting U.S. bases in Japan and historically unequal relations between the island prefecture and the central government. …

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/perspectives/column/news/20100403p2a00m0na001000c.html

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Mainichi Daily News
April 2, 2010

Japan is under mounting pressure to foot the expenses of building infrastructure necessary to expand U.S. bases on Guam to accommodate about 8,000 Marines to be relocated out of Okinawa Prefecture, as Washington has failed to shoulder the financial burden.

The Guam territorial government estimates that $3.9 billion, or approximately 370 billion yen, will be necessary to build an additional sewage treatment facility, power station and improve roads and bridges. The amount is eight times the annual budget of the island.

A high-ranking Guam government official expressed grave concern that the island could go broke, pointing out that the federal government has stopped short of pledging to foot the costs. He then asked if Tokyo will shoulder the financial burden.

Military bases cover 30 percent of the land area of Guam, with Andersen Air Force Base situated in its north and Apra Harbor Navy Base on its west coast.

Furthermore, a total of 17 servicemen from the island have died in the war in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001, and in a Feb. 15 address Guam Gov. Felix Perez Camacho emphasized that Guam dedicated more lives and land per resident to war than any other state or territory in the United States.

Angered by a federal government that is trying to force the islanders to make further sacrifices, the Guam legislature adopted a resolution on Feb. 11, demanding that the plan to expand bases in Guam be revised, and in his Feb. 15 address Gov. Camacho insisted that the expansion of U.S. bases in Guam be delayed beyond 2014. …

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/perspectives/column/news/20100403p2a00m0na002000c.html

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Bloomberg.com
By John Brinsley and Sachiko Sakamaki
March 3, 2010

Japan’s government will keep a U.S. military base on Okinawa, meeting the demands of the Obama administration, even if that means alienating a coalition partner and local people, a vice defense minister said.

Okinawan residents, who want the Marine base moved off the island, will be offered “compensation” for accepting the government’s decision, Akihisa Nagashima said in an interview in Tokyo yesterday, without elaborating. His remarks are the most definitive by a government member indicating the base will stay on Okinawa.

Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has set a May deadline for settling a dispute that has overshadowed the 50th anniversary of the U.S.-Japan security treaty. Almost 50,000 U.S. military personnel are stationed in Japan, more than half on Okinawa, located 950 miles (1,530 kilometers) south of Tokyo. …

www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601070&sid=aOPbacK4dqW8

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Stop NATO
March 6, 2010
By Rick Rozoff

Along with plans to base anti-ballistic missile facilities in Poland near Russia’s border (a 35 mile distance) and in Bulgaria and Romania across the Black Sea from Russia, Washington and the self-styled global military bloc it leads, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, have arranged a series of military exercises on and near Russia’s borders this year.

While the White House, Pentagon and State Department pro forma identify al-Qaeda, Taliban, Iran, North Korea, climate change, cyber attacks and a host of other threats as those the U.S. is girding itself to combat, Washington is demonstrating its true strategic objectives by deploying interceptor missiles and staging war games along Russia’s western and southern borders. …

The NATO war games included troops from 15 nations, among them – in addition to the U.S. – Britain, Austria, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden. Austria, Finland and Sweden are Partnership for Peace affiliates of the North Atlantic military bloc. …

American author Edward Herman recently presented a similar perspective in pointing out that since the end of the Cold War “Across the globe…U.S. military bases are expanding, not contracting. The encirclement of Russia and steady stream of war games and exercises in the Baltic, Caspian, Mediterranean and Western Pacific areas continue, the closer engagement with Georgia and effort to bring it into NATO moves ahead, as do plans for the placement of missiles along Russia’s borders and beyond.” …

American and other NATO member states’ troops, warplanes and warships are visiting Russia’s neighborhood more frequently and approaching its borders more precariously. Over the past five years the Pentagon and NATO have secured permanent air, naval and training bases in Poland, Bulgaria, Romania and Lithuania and interceptor missile sites in the first three nations. …

As Indian journalist M K Bhadrakumar remarked, NATO’s post-Cold War drive to the east began in the Balkans and has proceeded inexorably to the Black Sea, the Caucasus, Central Asia and Afghanistan. It has also turned the Baltic Sea into a U.S. and Alliance lake, with Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Sweden within the Western military phalanx – all have troops in Afghanistan under NATO command, for example – and Russia left alone in the region.

That trajectory – from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, the Caucasus and Central Asia – places U.S. and NATO military presence along a substantial portion of the land borders of European Russia.

http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/

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