WEBVTT 00:00.000 --> 00:18.880 I wanted to start tonight actually not about military bases, but over the last month I'm 00:18.880 --> 00:23.840 a civilian member of the board of directors at Coffee Strong. 00:23.840 --> 00:26.320 The organization is called GI Voice. 00:26.320 --> 00:33.400 And over the last month we've had an incredible sea change at Joint Base Lewis-McChord ever 00:33.400 --> 00:36.240 since the Panjwai massacre. 00:36.240 --> 00:44.240 The attention of the world has really been focused on Joint Base Lewis-McChord. 00:44.240 --> 00:49.320 And a lot of the things that a lot of the Iraq and Afghan vets have been saying for 00:49.320 --> 00:56.240 the last three years since we were founded on Election Day 2008 has come to pass and 00:56.240 --> 00:59.960 is now very well known in the world's media. 00:59.960 --> 01:02.880 CNN, CBS, everybody was there. 01:02.880 --> 01:09.600 And right now we can say for certainty that the whole world is watching Lewis-McChord. 01:09.600 --> 01:18.480 And we have an amazing situation in Olympia where we have a very large progressive anti-war 01:18.480 --> 01:26.960 community in Olympia, Tacoma, et cetera, side by side with a very, very large military base 01:26.960 --> 01:28.320 community. 01:28.320 --> 01:34.880 And there are very few places in the country where you can say that that opportunity for 01:34.880 --> 01:38.960 dialogue, for outreach is there. 01:38.960 --> 01:42.600 And so it's a really important time. 01:42.600 --> 01:51.060 And instead of the deployments to Afghanistan rolling down, they're rolling up. 01:51.060 --> 02:01.500 We have 4,000, 4,000 more soldiers being deployed from JBLM over the next month or so. 02:01.500 --> 02:06.600 And so this idea that somehow everything is going to be over in 2014, there's nothing 02:06.600 --> 02:10.420 to worry about is really reading false. 02:10.420 --> 02:13.960 We see the war at home around Olympia. 02:13.960 --> 02:15.940 We see the accidents. 02:15.940 --> 02:22.600 We see the domestic violence, the suicides, the PTSD, all of the results of war. 02:22.600 --> 02:24.040 We see the helicopters overhead. 02:24.040 --> 02:26.760 We hear the artillery fire. 02:26.760 --> 02:29.200 And so the war really is at home. 02:29.200 --> 02:33.720 And I think the more we bring out that connection and the more we stand with some of the soldiers 02:33.720 --> 02:38.000 who are dissenting, the better for all of us. 02:38.000 --> 02:42.040 I wanted to open with a poem related to Afghanistan. 02:42.040 --> 02:47.920 I was teaching a program at Evergreen on food, place, and culture. 02:47.920 --> 02:52.720 And I started researching pomegranates. 02:52.720 --> 02:56.400 And so I wanted to share just six minutes. 02:56.400 --> 02:58.780 It's my first PowerPoint poem. 02:58.780 --> 03:01.600 So be patient. 03:01.600 --> 03:03.920 I'm not sure it will work so well. 03:03.920 --> 03:11.000 But this is from an experience I had coming back from Canada a few years ago. 03:11.000 --> 03:15.680 It's called Pomegranates and Grenades. 03:15.680 --> 03:17.400 Pomegranate soda tastes pretty good. 03:17.400 --> 03:20.140 That's what I thought on a visit to Canada a few years ago. 03:20.140 --> 03:23.800 Why not take a couple of 12 packs back home in our car? 03:23.800 --> 03:27.560 Nothing to declare when we pass through the border, only to discover to our horror that 03:27.560 --> 03:33.200 during the war on terror, we had smuggled in two crates of grenades. 03:33.200 --> 03:37.480 You see, in bilingual Canada, all products have to be labeled in both English and in 03:37.480 --> 03:38.480 French. 03:38.480 --> 03:43.140 So it's pomegranate on one side and grenade on the other. 03:43.140 --> 03:48.280 After perplexing why someone would name a fruit after a weapon, I did a little wikipedizing 03:48.280 --> 03:51.760 and found out it was the other way around. 03:51.760 --> 03:56.780 French soldiers in the 16th century named their cool new exploding ball after the French 03:56.780 --> 03:58.920 word for pomegranate. 03:58.920 --> 04:03.040 The grenadiers thought their invention resembled the size and shape of the fruit, whose 04:03.040 --> 04:08.320 blood red juicy seeds resembled the soon to be bloody shrapnel. 04:08.320 --> 04:13.840 In many other languages, the pomegranate and grenade came to share similar or identical 04:13.840 --> 04:14.840 terms. 04:14.840 --> 04:18.000 Granada in Spanish, hence the city in Spain. 04:18.000 --> 04:23.140 Granada in Italian, Polish and Russian, and even Ramon in Hebrew. 04:23.140 --> 04:28.160 The pomegranate giveth life and the grenade taketh it away by cutting through the skin 04:28.160 --> 04:31.440 and puncturing internal organs. 04:31.440 --> 04:37.520 Each pomegranate has about 600 seeds encased by arils or tiny sacks of juice. 04:37.520 --> 04:44.240 The proper way to extract the arils is to first, carefully cut off the callix or crown. 04:44.240 --> 04:48.040 Second, lightly score the leathery rind into quarters. 04:48.040 --> 04:53.760 Third, gently pull apart the fruit to expose arils and fourth, peacefully pluck them out 04:53.760 --> 04:56.680 from the white membrane. 04:56.680 --> 04:59.960 Preparing a pomegranate is like disarming a grenade. 04:59.960 --> 05:03.880 If you push in the callix, you have armed the striker lever. 05:03.880 --> 05:09.620 If you violently tear apart the fruit or cut too deeply into it, the arils will be punctured. 05:09.620 --> 05:11.480 They will bleed red stains. 05:11.480 --> 05:13.320 They will scream and cry. 05:13.320 --> 05:15.660 They will die. 05:15.660 --> 05:20.760 The original homeland of the pomegranate stretches from India to Iran through Afghanistan and 05:20.760 --> 05:21.760 Pakistan. 05:21.760 --> 05:26.680 It spread across the red and Mediterranean seas in ancient times and was worshiped by 05:26.680 --> 05:30.920 all peoples who ate its succulent fruit. 05:30.920 --> 05:38.120 To the Romans, it was pomegranatus or seeded apple whose tree could live up to 200 years. 05:38.120 --> 05:43.880 To the Egyptians, it symbolized everlasting life and was buried with King Tut. 05:43.880 --> 05:48.040 Like the Phoenicians, they grew pomegranates for religious purposes. 05:48.040 --> 05:52.920 To the Greeks, it symbolized love and fertility and the blood of death. 05:52.920 --> 05:57.720 Also in Aphrodite offered the sensuous fruit in marriage and Greek brides wore its twigs 05:57.720 --> 05:59.200 in their hair. 05:59.200 --> 06:04.500 But Hades also tricked Persephone into eating four pomegranate seeds, thus creating the 06:04.500 --> 06:07.280 four barren months of winter. 06:07.280 --> 06:10.120 To the Jews, the pomegranate was a blessed fruit. 06:10.120 --> 06:14.080 Its callix, the source of the design for King David's crown. 06:14.080 --> 06:19.880 Its seeds symbolizing the 613 mitzvot or commandments of the Torah. 06:19.880 --> 06:24.520 To the Christians, the seeded apple may have been the fruit that tempted Eve in the Garden 06:24.520 --> 06:25.920 of Eden. 06:25.920 --> 06:32.040 It stood for suffering, resurrection, and the blood of martyrs. 06:32.040 --> 06:36.800 To the Muslims, the fruit is associated with the Garden of Paradise and was a favorite 06:36.800 --> 06:38.680 of the Prophet Muhammad. 06:38.680 --> 06:46.060 It is still used today in red pepper spread in Syria, tabbouleh in Turkey, and chicken 06:46.060 --> 06:50.280 stew in Iran. 06:50.280 --> 06:56.760 To the Americans, the pomegranate is a life-saving food and an elixir of health, an instrument 06:56.760 --> 07:01.560 of war, and a tool of occupation. 07:01.560 --> 07:06.400 When their towers were toppled by a flying army, the Americans invaded the homeland of 07:06.400 --> 07:11.640 the pomegranate, bringing the fruit's namesake as part of their vast arsenal. 07:11.640 --> 07:16.800 The grenade machine gun had its first use in Afghanistan, where it became a very popular 07:16.800 --> 07:20.320 weapon against the Taliban. 07:20.320 --> 07:25.240 Pomegranates themselves still grew along the Argandab River in Kandahar province, the Pashtun 07:25.240 --> 07:27.460 heartland of the Taliban. 07:27.460 --> 07:32.200 The strategists of U.S. counterinsurgency looked to them as a lucrative cash crop that 07:32.200 --> 07:37.400 could lure Afghan farmers away from growing opium poppies. 07:37.400 --> 07:43.360 The way to curb addiction to narcotics would be addiction to export-oriented capitalism. 07:43.360 --> 07:49.400 Instead of grenadiers harvesting blood, harvest pomegranate juice for grenadine cocktails. 07:49.400 --> 07:53.880 It was only a matter of months before the aggressive worldwide campaign began, the war 07:53.880 --> 07:59.240 for POM and the war on terror by the antioxidant superpower. 07:59.240 --> 08:04.720 As the army fought insurgence in the pomegranate groves, the engorging growing industry fought 08:04.720 --> 08:08.440 for customers in the globalized market. 08:08.440 --> 08:14.120 Within three years, by the time I bought my soda, nearly 200 pomegranate products had 08:14.120 --> 08:16.800 hit the shelves. 08:16.800 --> 08:25.920 Wine and vodka, beer and salsa, soap and pills, dressing and shampoo. 08:25.920 --> 08:31.360 The fruit's miracle properties could cure high blood pressure, cancer, and heart disease 08:31.360 --> 08:34.320 among citizens of the heart of the empire. 08:34.320 --> 08:39.680 They do little to heal wounds caused by hellfire missiles, cluster bombs, or shrapnel from 08:39.680 --> 08:43.040 shiny new grenade machine guns. 08:43.040 --> 08:47.980 In the Argandab Valley, the 5th Striker Brigade from Fort Lewis, Washington set up a base 08:47.980 --> 08:52.160 in pomegranate country in the middle of Taliban country. 08:52.160 --> 08:57.680 A kill team placed a grenade on an innocent civilian they killed to cover his murder. 08:57.680 --> 09:02.840 Another striker platoon got marooned in an orchard for several days. 09:02.840 --> 09:08.040 Bars ran so low that they turned to juice-filled pomegranates to maintain their strength. 09:08.040 --> 09:12.800 Like the Greeks and Persians, the British and Russians before them, the American soldiers 09:12.800 --> 09:17.360 had to sip the blood of life from the ancient pomegranate to give them the energy to hurl 09:17.360 --> 09:20.160 the modern tools of death. 09:20.160 --> 09:24.040 Because of the battles and the booby traps in the Argandab Valley, no one can pick the 09:24.040 --> 09:28.760 fruit which now lies in rotting piles. 09:28.760 --> 09:32.620 Preparing a pomegranate is like disarming a grenade. 09:32.620 --> 09:34.840 Carefully cut off the crown. 09:34.840 --> 09:37.760 Lightly score the rind. 09:37.760 --> 09:40.120 Gently pull apart the fruit. 09:40.120 --> 09:42.480 Peacefully pluck out the seeds. 09:42.480 --> 09:56.200 Handle it with care so it doesn't explode in your face. 09:56.200 --> 10:04.760 So I want to talk about a very much related topic of the military bases around the world. 10:04.760 --> 10:11.080 I think being exposed to them in places like Washington State, I spent some time in the 10:11.080 --> 10:14.280 Philippines and Europe. 10:14.280 --> 10:21.320 I'm really convinced that warfare is not just about violence. 10:21.320 --> 10:22.760 It's not just about killing. 10:22.760 --> 10:27.000 It's about power and domination. 10:27.000 --> 10:34.560 And it's just as horrific if it's done without explicit violence. 10:34.560 --> 10:41.520 And one country's dignity and self-determination is taken over by another and it becomes something 10:41.520 --> 10:42.520 normal. 10:42.520 --> 10:47.400 And I think that's one of the reasons I was attracted to Native American studies. 10:47.400 --> 10:52.320 And I really think that a lot of what we're seeing in the world today is very much along 10:52.320 --> 10:58.640 the lines of this idea of occupation, of controlling the economy, controlling the culture of a 10:58.640 --> 11:04.040 place and dominating it. 11:04.040 --> 11:09.000 And I think it's important to focus on things like the economics, like the military bases, 11:09.000 --> 11:14.600 like the resources, and not just focus on the moments when there's an invasion, when 11:14.600 --> 11:16.880 there's bombing, when there are people being killed. 11:16.880 --> 11:24.840 To me, the most interesting time is after a war, is after the occupation goes off the 11:24.840 --> 11:31.240 front pages into the back pages and the real control by the United States is instituted. 11:31.240 --> 11:35.420 So I think that that's one of the reasons that I've been studying military bases for 11:35.420 --> 11:36.920 years and years. 11:36.920 --> 11:44.400 But just to get a sense of the radical, radical changes that we've seen in the global network 11:44.400 --> 11:50.520 of U.S. military bases over just the last 20 years is astounding. 11:50.520 --> 12:00.520 And we have a number of these countries that in 1990 had no U.S. military bases. 12:00.520 --> 12:05.060 And now it seems almost like they've been there forever, a large part of the Middle 12:05.060 --> 12:10.040 East and Central Asia in particular, but also other parts of the world. 12:10.040 --> 12:14.520 Next to the U.S. nuclear monopoly, there's no more universally recognized symbol of the 12:14.520 --> 12:19.600 nation's superpower status than its overseas basing system. 12:19.600 --> 12:23.040 Senior advisor to vice chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. 12:23.040 --> 12:31.040 Give you a sense of the size of some of these monstrous forward operating bases or FOBs 12:31.040 --> 12:34.440 in places like Iraq or Afghanistan. 12:34.440 --> 12:37.640 This is a satellite photo of Iraq. 12:37.640 --> 12:39.840 You can see this yourself on Google Earth. 12:39.840 --> 12:41.640 We could probably go on Google Earth. 12:41.640 --> 12:43.360 I think we have a signal. 12:43.360 --> 12:46.920 But I just did a few snapshots from Google Earth. 12:46.920 --> 12:52.660 And in the Tigris Euphrates River Valley, there's a little dot. 12:52.660 --> 12:55.520 At first you don't really see it, but it's right there. 12:55.520 --> 12:58.520 That little red box is around the dot. 12:58.520 --> 13:00.400 Just keep your eye on there as we zoom in. 13:00.400 --> 13:09.240 And you can see there's this kind of natural lay of the land around the river valley where 13:09.240 --> 13:11.200 it turns into desert. 13:11.200 --> 13:16.320 But there's this kind of artificial rectangle as we zoom in. 13:16.320 --> 13:23.160 And that's Balat Air Base. 13:23.160 --> 13:25.840 It's built with, it was Saddam's Air Force. 13:25.840 --> 13:27.800 It was built with Soviet help. 13:27.800 --> 13:34.520 And when the Americans went in, this is the premier air base and still functions because 13:34.520 --> 13:38.960 it's the headquarters of a lot of the private contractors. 13:38.960 --> 13:48.200 Down here is what's called KBR land or Kellogg, Brown and Root, former subsidiary of Halliburton. 13:48.200 --> 13:54.880 You can see the Chinook helicopters there on the tarmac. 13:54.880 --> 13:58.040 You can see those little holes. 13:58.040 --> 14:01.960 Those are mortar craters that are left by insurgent mortars. 14:01.960 --> 14:04.880 So many of them that people were stationed at the base. 14:04.880 --> 14:09.320 I met several, used to call it Mortaritaville. 14:09.320 --> 14:14.360 And they even have a song to accompany that. 14:14.360 --> 14:21.120 So that gives you a sense of the gargantuan scale of some of these bases in places like 14:21.120 --> 14:25.640 Iraq or Afghanistan or Kosovo. 14:25.640 --> 14:29.520 So looking at, and I know there's the take the billions back home. 14:29.520 --> 14:34.920 So I looked up the base structure report from 2007. 14:34.920 --> 14:40.160 There's been one more recently, but not with as accurate data. 14:40.160 --> 14:46.080 823 bases outside the U.S. and that doesn't count Iraq or Afghanistan. 14:46.080 --> 14:55.200 Those are considered in war zones rather than part of the U.S. military base network maintained 14:55.200 --> 14:59.300 at about $100 billion a year. 14:59.300 --> 15:03.560 So when you have a little conversation with someone about the federal budget, about all 15:03.560 --> 15:10.280 the cuts, it's a figure that kind of sticks in the mind, $100 billion a year. 15:10.280 --> 15:12.640 There are many in U.S. territories. 15:12.640 --> 15:17.440 There are about 4,000 on the U.S. mainland, about 700 of the major. 15:17.440 --> 15:22.320 The 100 billion is just the ones outside the United States. 15:22.320 --> 15:26.560 So that would be the savings if we just decided to close down all four military bases and 15:26.560 --> 15:29.320 bring them home. 15:29.320 --> 15:34.080 There are many purposes of military bases, not just one purpose. 15:34.080 --> 15:37.920 Obviously it's to project force into other countries. 15:37.920 --> 15:43.400 Also is a listening post, electronic surveillance on the surrounding area. 15:43.400 --> 15:49.240 Pre-positioning supplies, even if you don't have a lot of personnel there. 15:49.240 --> 15:53.160 There's supplies there ready to be used in a war. 15:53.160 --> 15:58.720 Meaning munitions testing and all the other kinds of things that are associated with military 15:58.720 --> 16:04.480 personnel, medical facilities, a prison, rest and recreation facilities. 16:04.480 --> 16:10.400 What I find most important about bases is their function as a tripwire. 16:10.400 --> 16:19.160 And by tripwire I mean something that is present that if it is positioned, it's put in place 16:19.160 --> 16:24.440 in order that it become a controversy, in order that it can generate conflict. 16:24.440 --> 16:30.400 So a military tripwire, for instance in South Korea, because they're U.S. military bases 16:30.400 --> 16:34.720 in Korea, if there's a war between North and South Korea, we automatically have a role 16:34.720 --> 16:37.540 in it because we already have bases there. 16:37.540 --> 16:41.200 It's not a matter of invading from the United States. 16:41.200 --> 16:47.280 A political tripwire is one, and Philippines is a very good example, all through the 80s 16:47.280 --> 16:48.720 and 90s. 16:48.720 --> 16:51.000 It cements U.S. interests in that country. 16:51.000 --> 16:56.560 So if there's any kind of fundamental social change going on in that country, it has to 16:56.560 --> 17:02.500 be squashed because it might affect the status of the bases. 17:02.500 --> 17:08.920 Or if there's a dictator who's repressing his own people, that might be to the detriment 17:08.920 --> 17:13.800 of the U.S. military bases as well, and that dictator might have to be held back. 17:13.800 --> 17:18.480 But the primary interest of the United States is to defend the bases and will interfere 17:18.480 --> 17:21.680 in internal politics in order to do so. 17:21.680 --> 17:24.000 It's obviously easier, as we saw in Panama. 17:24.000 --> 17:29.760 I visited Panama a couple years ago and saw the former U.S. military bases there. 17:29.760 --> 17:34.040 It's obviously easier to invade a country if you already have bases there. 17:34.040 --> 17:40.420 You just roll right out of the front gate instead of just having to drop in paratroops. 17:40.420 --> 17:47.200 And so I really do believe that one of the reasons for foreign military bases is to win 17:47.200 --> 17:51.960 popular support in the United States for intervention with the message of we've got to protect our 17:51.960 --> 17:55.600 troops, our people are there, we have to do something. 17:55.600 --> 18:00.080 And I think that that's deliberate, conscious, not just a side effect. 18:00.080 --> 18:06.160 We never ask for permission to escape from any of the countries that we sent down these 18:06.160 --> 18:07.160 militaries. 18:07.160 --> 18:08.160 Well, we do. 18:08.160 --> 18:09.160 We do. 18:09.160 --> 18:14.480 But the question is who, and I'll get to that, who do we ask permission from? 18:14.480 --> 18:19.600 And if it's a dictatorship that doesn't have popular support, if it's an elite that really 18:19.600 --> 18:25.240 only represents a tiny fraction of the population, those are the people who give the permission. 18:25.240 --> 18:28.680 Much like how the World Bank or IMF interacts with the country. 18:28.680 --> 18:31.560 It's much like the U.S. military interacts. 18:31.560 --> 18:37.280 But there are obviously, and there's quite a bit of exposure on this, in particular an 18:37.280 --> 18:42.920 author named Cynthia Enloe, that if you really want to see the dynamics of U.S. military 18:42.920 --> 18:51.520 bases both abroad and at home, I think she's the best scholar of the interaction, especially 18:51.520 --> 18:56.040 of women and militarism, but in particular military bases. 18:56.040 --> 19:01.440 And you can see the economic gap between the Americans and the local population, the racial 19:01.440 --> 19:07.520 attitudes, usually racism by Americans towards the local people. 19:07.520 --> 19:11.260 In some instances in Europe, the other way around. 19:11.260 --> 19:17.080 Racism directed towards American GIs, African American, Latino, or other GIs who are put 19:17.080 --> 19:20.320 in an all European environment. 19:20.320 --> 19:27.000 The dangers, the risks of explosions from unexploded ordnance, environmental contamination, 19:27.000 --> 19:28.560 et cetera. 19:28.560 --> 19:34.960 The crimes that are directed by U.S. military personnel towards local women and girls in 19:34.960 --> 19:42.600 particular and how if a Marine is accused of rape, instead of being put on trial in 19:42.600 --> 19:50.640 that country, they're pulled out and perhaps court-martialed in U.S. territory or perhaps 19:50.640 --> 19:51.640 not. 19:51.640 --> 19:55.000 And that's under the SOFA or the Status of Forces Agreement. 19:55.000 --> 20:02.820 When I was in the Philippines, I was just amazed by the scale of the prostitution industry 20:02.820 --> 20:09.280 and how women have been systematically prostituted, not as some accidental side effect of having 20:09.280 --> 20:14.160 a lot of soldiers there, but as part of the arrangement worked out with the host businesses 20:14.160 --> 20:15.880 and host government. 20:15.880 --> 20:20.880 So this is what I want to talk about is kind of the geography of U.S. military bases and 20:20.880 --> 20:28.760 how in particular in this strategic area of the Middle East, it's changed radically over 20:28.760 --> 20:30.760 the last 20, 25 years. 20:30.760 --> 20:36.320 In 1989, these were the only host countries for U.S. military bases in the region. 20:36.320 --> 20:43.360 Turkey, Greece, Somalia had a naval base that was Soviet, was turned over to the Americans. 20:43.360 --> 20:49.600 A lot of oil the British had pulled out, but not a big U.S. military presence. 20:49.600 --> 20:58.360 Since 1990, we've had a series of wars that have left behind a whole string of permanent 20:58.360 --> 21:03.560 military bases in this region that previously had not had military bases. 21:03.560 --> 21:09.520 And I guess the question should be asked, are these bases being built to wage wars by 21:09.520 --> 21:16.100 the United States or is the United States waging wars in order to leave behind these 21:16.100 --> 21:23.720 military bases as a political, military, and economic cementing of U.S. influence in this 21:23.720 --> 21:26.120 strategic area? 21:26.120 --> 21:32.240 So the military bases that we leave behind are as important as the wars themselves. 21:32.240 --> 21:37.760 And I think that each of these wars, it doesn't matter if it's a Republican or a Democratic 21:37.760 --> 21:43.440 administration, this is through the Bush administrations, through the Clinton administration, through 21:43.440 --> 21:50.340 the Obama administration, seeing the stationing of the bases not only to wage the wars, but 21:50.340 --> 21:57.240 using each of the wars, not necessarily planning it out in advance, it's not a conspiracy theory, 21:57.240 --> 22:03.040 but looking at each of these wars as a convenient opportunity to station these bases and leave 22:03.040 --> 22:07.640 them behind after the war is over. 22:07.640 --> 22:13.360 American vital interests in the central region are longstanding with over 65% of the world's 22:13.360 --> 22:18.200 oil reserves located in the Gulf states of the region from which the U.S. imports nearly 22:18.200 --> 22:26.320 20% of its needs, Western Europe 43% and Japan 68%, the international community must have 22:26.320 --> 22:31.680 free and unfettered access to the region's resources, the head of central command. 22:31.680 --> 22:38.200 So it isn't a matter of the oil from the region is vital to American interests. 22:38.200 --> 22:44.200 Whenever you hear about this idea of domestic energy independence, blah, blah, blah, blah, 22:44.200 --> 22:49.120 blah, not very much of our oil actually comes from the Middle East, it comes from places 22:49.120 --> 22:56.040 like Canada, Mexico, West Africa, very little of it comes from the Middle East. 22:56.040 --> 23:04.400 What actually the U.S. role in the Middle East in terms of oil is in terms of getting 23:04.400 --> 23:11.320 the profits from the oil and it's primarily Western Europe and Japan and now increasingly 23:11.320 --> 23:16.880 China that are the ones dependent, particularly Japan that doesn't have domestic energy resources 23:16.880 --> 23:20.220 of its own is very dependent on Persian Gulf oil. 23:20.220 --> 23:25.000 So as far back as the Gulf War Jacques Chirac in France correctly summed it up, he said 23:25.000 --> 23:29.680 it's not that the Americans want the oil so they can use the oil, it's so they can control 23:29.680 --> 23:38.600 the spigot of oil for their emerging economic competitors which is the European Union and 23:38.600 --> 23:40.620 Japan and China. 23:40.620 --> 23:51.080 So when we see the Gulf War to think well, I think people, my students don't even know 23:51.080 --> 23:53.560 that the Gulf War happened. 23:53.560 --> 23:59.160 They know about the Iraq War but they don't know about the Gulf War in 1991. 23:59.160 --> 24:04.720 When you think about the blow back then it was the Kobar Towers in Saudi Arabia that 24:04.720 --> 24:08.800 was attacked by Al-Qaeda. 24:08.800 --> 24:12.800 It wasn't so much the war itself that generated that blow back, it was the presence of the 24:12.800 --> 24:18.360 bases still in Saudi Arabia that generated the resentment that led to the formation of 24:18.360 --> 24:23.760 Al-Qaeda and I'm not going to get into all of the theories about Al-Qaeda. 24:23.760 --> 24:30.960 Al-Qaeda came out of the war in Afghanistan, really the Americans supporting the Mujahideen 24:30.960 --> 24:38.520 against the Soviets and it was the presence of US military bases in Saudi Arabia and support 24:38.520 --> 24:44.600 for Israel that created the huge scale resentment that I think was exploited by Al-Qaeda. 24:44.600 --> 24:51.680 But after the war, after the Gulf War in 1991, the invasion of Kuwait and southern Iraq, 24:51.680 --> 24:57.240 this was the situation where you had a cluster of bases set up Saudi Arabia, you had the 24:57.240 --> 25:04.200 fifth fleet in Bahrain, you had air base in Qatar, you had United Arab Emirates Oman and 25:04.200 --> 25:09.200 the US has pulled back because of this blow back from much of Saudi Arabia that the US 25:09.200 --> 25:11.720 still has a presence in Saudi Arabia. 25:11.720 --> 25:16.680 There's still communications bases, there's still Saudi bases used by the United States, 25:16.680 --> 25:19.020 it hasn't abandoned those. 25:19.020 --> 25:23.920 So this was the cluster left behind by the Gulf War. 25:23.920 --> 25:30.320 The Yugoslav Wars, the series of interventions in both Bosnia and Kosovo left behind a series 25:30.320 --> 25:39.400 of small bases in the NATO zone of Bosnia and a very large and several of my students 25:39.400 --> 25:46.240 at Evergreen who are veterans have been stationed at Camp Bondsteel, which is not only to have 25:46.240 --> 25:53.200 a US presence in that sector in Kosovo, which is the point of contention between Serbs and 25:53.200 --> 25:59.760 Albanians, but also a lot of them have been stationed at Camp Bondsteel, this enormous 25:59.760 --> 26:03.560 sprawling site before they're deployed to the Middle East. 26:03.560 --> 26:08.960 So it's the stepping stone, this lily pad strategy that's being utilized. 26:08.960 --> 26:14.400 So this was the cluster left behind after the Yugoslav Wars or Balkan Wars in an air 26:14.400 --> 26:20.400 base in Hungary, bases in Bosnia, bases in Kosovo for a while a presence in Macedonia 26:20.400 --> 26:26.040 and Albania, so in southeastern Europe as well. 26:26.040 --> 26:32.680 The Afghan War launched in November of 2001 has left behind a large number of forward 26:32.680 --> 26:38.080 operating bases throughout the country, in particular in the Pashtun South, which is 26:38.080 --> 26:45.280 the heartland of the Taliban, and really stepping into that very complex ethnic geography. 26:45.280 --> 26:54.200 We also of course have Afghanistan as a transit point for the new great game of oil and gas 26:54.200 --> 27:02.120 pipelines coming out of the Caspian Sea basin, and several of the figures involved in the 27:02.120 --> 27:08.080 Afghan War have been actually figures with UNICAL Corporation, so even though it's not 27:08.080 --> 27:16.000 rich in oil like Iraq, Afghanistan still plays a role in the game of oil and natural gas. 27:16.000 --> 27:18.980 When the Afghan conflict is over, we will not leave Central Asia. 27:18.980 --> 27:23.680 We have long-term plans and interests in this region, and its countries will be given assistance 27:23.680 --> 27:31.320 in exchange for concrete steps, like having these air bases in Afghanistan. 27:31.320 --> 27:37.280 I was actually amazed, one of my students in Wisconsin in 2002 had been stationed at 27:37.280 --> 27:44.240 Bagram and she learned more about me in my class, and I didn't even know that much about 27:44.240 --> 27:46.120 Afghanistan at that point. 27:46.120 --> 27:51.120 She learned more from me in my class than she had learned from the Air Force before 27:51.120 --> 27:52.240 she was deployed. 27:52.240 --> 27:56.660 She didn't even know the ethnicity of the people who were around that air base. 27:56.660 --> 27:58.960 She didn't know the cities that were nearby. 27:58.960 --> 28:03.800 They deliberately keep people in the dark in a systematic way. 28:03.800 --> 28:12.320 This is the cluster that was left behind after Afghanistan, a series of semi-secret bases, 28:12.320 --> 28:18.760 air bases or parts of air bases in Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, which 28:18.760 --> 28:19.760 is very interesting. 28:19.760 --> 28:25.360 It's actually a country that has had both US and Russian military bases right next to 28:25.360 --> 28:28.800 China, with great concern to China. 28:28.800 --> 28:35.480 In Uzbekistan, the dictator massacred a large number of people in the city of Andijan in 28:35.480 --> 28:39.520 2005, and the US actually objected for once. 28:39.520 --> 28:41.280 It was so blatant. 28:41.280 --> 28:45.520 That dictator temporarily pulled out the bases. 28:45.520 --> 28:52.720 There's a similar situation in Kyrgyzstan where the US pulled out, at least for a while, 28:52.720 --> 28:55.600 it's hard to tell whether they've been kicked out of there. 28:55.600 --> 28:59.800 There's a whole series of US military bases around the world that have been kicked out. 28:59.800 --> 29:03.840 Of course, Iraq War, and I put a lot of question marks. 29:03.840 --> 29:09.560 I think the question marks would go from there to the wall if the Iraq War has really ended 29:09.560 --> 29:11.200 in 2011. 29:11.200 --> 29:14.760 The whole reason for the war is to get American troops into the region to put pressure on 29:14.760 --> 29:16.400 other governments. 29:16.400 --> 29:21.000 This is going to be the main American military base in that region. 29:21.000 --> 29:24.360 I think that that has come to pass to some extent. 29:24.360 --> 29:29.340 Even though you have the ground forces supposedly having pulled out, you have a large number 29:29.340 --> 29:31.460 of private contractors. 29:31.460 --> 29:37.000 Most of the JBLM soldiers are still being deployed to Kuwait. 29:37.000 --> 29:43.520 There's nothing in any of the agreements that says the US can't use drones in Iraq or bomb 29:43.520 --> 29:46.880 insurgent positions in Iraq. 29:46.880 --> 29:52.600 Watch for that kind of warfare, that kind of technical warfare to be continuing. 29:52.600 --> 29:56.900 Even Jimmy Carter said, the reason that we went to Iraq was to establish a permanent 29:56.900 --> 29:58.480 military base in the Gulf region. 29:58.480 --> 30:02.000 I've never heard any of our leaders say that they would commit themselves to the Iraqi 30:02.000 --> 30:06.200 people that 10 years from now there will be no military bases of the United States in 30:06.200 --> 30:07.200 Iraq. 30:07.200 --> 30:11.640 Now, remember back to when we were talking about gender and about social costs. 30:11.640 --> 30:20.520 It was really the insistence by the Iraqi Shia opposition of Muqtada al-Sadr that the 30:20.520 --> 30:28.740 United States has to renounce immunity of its troops when they commit crimes. 30:28.740 --> 30:35.120 That caused the Iraqi parliament to say, you have to pull out your most explicitly military 30:35.120 --> 30:36.760 troops. 30:36.760 --> 30:44.600 What's happened now is that the private contractors, and in 2009 the number of contractors surpassed 30:44.600 --> 30:49.080 the number of soldiers, and they are not under the military. 30:49.080 --> 30:53.640 It's true, Department of Defense has pulled out almost all its people. 30:53.640 --> 30:59.400 The command for the private contractors is the State Department, isn't the Department 30:59.400 --> 31:00.400 of Defense. 31:00.400 --> 31:08.560 Hillary Clinton, who's giving the orders for the armed personnel in Iraq, not the Pentagon. 31:08.560 --> 31:15.320 The major bases, six major bases that are under the Iraqi flag now, but where there's 31:15.320 --> 31:22.440 still American Special Forces operations, private contractors operations, that's still 31:22.440 --> 31:23.440 happening. 31:23.440 --> 31:29.480 To just fill in the map a little bit, this was the situation in 1989 I showed you. 31:29.480 --> 31:35.880 After the Gulf War, you see Saudi Arabia in the Gulf States hosting bases. 31:35.880 --> 31:41.560 After the Yugoslav wars, you see in southeastern Europe, number of bases. 31:41.560 --> 31:46.560 After the Afghan war started, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Central Asia. 31:46.560 --> 31:54.560 The Iraq war, not only in Iraq, but also now in Romania, Bulgaria, to some extent Poland. 31:54.560 --> 31:57.480 There are also bases being built. 31:57.480 --> 32:04.360 You can see on this map why there's so much attention, beyond simply the fact that their 32:04.360 --> 32:06.560 governments are repressing protesters. 32:06.560 --> 32:13.400 Even before that, there was a huge amount of attention and pressure on Iran and Syria. 32:13.400 --> 32:20.320 Because if Iran and Syria, Iran as it did under the Shah, if they ended up hosting US 32:20.320 --> 32:24.720 military bases, if the current regime was toppled and a new government was put in that 32:24.720 --> 32:32.320 welcomed in US bases like the Shah did, that would complete the contiguous belt of US military 32:32.320 --> 32:38.120 bases from Poland to Pakistan. 32:38.120 --> 32:44.080 Contiguous US military sphere of influence, which also ends up being a US economic sphere 32:44.080 --> 32:45.320 of influence. 32:45.320 --> 32:54.160 So Iran and Syria would maintain this US sphere of influence between the European Union, one 32:54.160 --> 32:59.840 emerging economic competitor of the United States, and China and Japan, the two economic 32:59.840 --> 33:06.800 poles to the east that are in competition with the United States. 33:06.800 --> 33:11.720 So it's almost like, I tell my friends, it's almost as if you have all of Johnny Cash's 33:11.720 --> 33:15.600 CDs except for two, right? 33:15.600 --> 33:18.640 And you want those last two. 33:18.640 --> 33:25.800 There's been so much effort to build up, to have a permanent presence in this region between 33:25.800 --> 33:28.760 Asia and Europe and Russia. 33:28.760 --> 33:33.640 And the two obstacles that are left are Iran and Syria. 33:33.640 --> 33:37.760 Yeah, and this really comes from analysis by John Stockwell. 33:37.760 --> 33:44.520 And that is not necessarily that each of these dictators was financed, supported with arms, 33:44.520 --> 33:51.280 although a heck of a lot of them were, if you look at Saddam, at Noriega, the ones who 33:51.280 --> 33:56.400 were later toppled because they turned against the United States. 33:56.400 --> 34:02.320 But it's really who's in the media, who is put out there as the enemy who is going to 34:02.320 --> 34:05.720 justify this huge military budget. 34:05.720 --> 34:08.560 It used to be easy, the Soviet Union. 34:08.560 --> 34:11.920 They have missiles aimed at our cities. 34:11.920 --> 34:14.440 They're pretty easy to demonize. 34:14.440 --> 34:19.960 But since the fall of the Soviet Union, what I found is there's usually one Middle Eastern 34:19.960 --> 34:26.440 dictator and one Latin American dictator or rebel movement of some sort that's put forward. 34:26.440 --> 34:31.080 The Latin American dictators haven't worked too well. 34:31.080 --> 34:33.120 Nicaragua was hard to demonize. 34:33.120 --> 34:37.240 Venezuela, Chavez has won a lot of elections, kind of hard. 34:37.240 --> 34:43.280 But I think around the time of the Iran hostage crisis, they started test driving the Muslim 34:43.280 --> 34:45.960 enemy, and that worked a lot better. 34:45.960 --> 34:51.680 And so I think since then, there's always been Iran or somebody else that's put forward 34:51.680 --> 34:52.680 as the enemy. 34:52.680 --> 34:59.440 And I think that in many cases, the attention and demonization of some of these dictators 34:59.440 --> 35:03.720 actually prolonged them in power because they were able, like the case of Cuba is a good 35:03.720 --> 35:08.440 one, where they're able to say, our economic problems, that's not our fault. 35:08.440 --> 35:09.960 It's not the fault of the Cuban government. 35:09.960 --> 35:15.540 It's the fault of the United States that's launched an embargo for many years. 35:15.540 --> 35:18.540 And to some extent, that's true factually. 35:18.540 --> 35:25.360 And so you have an ability of someone like Noriega, like Saddam, to stay in power when 35:25.360 --> 35:27.720 they're demonized. 35:27.720 --> 35:31.840 So I think that you see this pattern over time. 35:31.840 --> 35:34.680 That some of the ones who have been the most demonized are the ones who end up staying 35:34.680 --> 35:40.280 in power the longest, kind of counterproductive. 35:40.280 --> 35:48.240 So I think in a lot of these cases, we saw opportunities to prevent wars before they 35:48.240 --> 35:49.240 happened. 35:49.240 --> 35:51.800 And we all went through it with Iraq. 35:51.800 --> 35:55.920 There are all these arguments to go to war because of famine, because of humanitarian 35:55.920 --> 36:02.720 reasons, because we need to catch a terrorist, because the country might be constructing 36:02.720 --> 36:05.080 nuclear chemical weapons. 36:05.080 --> 36:14.460 But the drive towards war seemed inexorable, no matter what the protests were. 36:14.460 --> 36:19.760 And I think that the stationing of military bases is one of the reasons for this, because 36:19.760 --> 36:26.440 the powers that be knew that these wars could lead to a more permanent presence, military 36:26.440 --> 36:29.120 presence, political control, economic presence. 36:29.120 --> 36:35.640 And so there really weren't necessarily logical reasons or logical rationales for these wars. 36:35.640 --> 36:41.340 It was decided that they should be done for other reasons, seizing the opportunities. 36:41.340 --> 36:50.840 And I think that when we saw how long the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan stretched on, 36:50.840 --> 36:59.040 and for that matter, the series of interventions in Somalia, failing to capture or kill bin 36:59.040 --> 37:02.480 Laden for many, many years, was convenient as well. 37:02.480 --> 37:11.080 Because as soon as they captured Saddam, the Shias in Iraq, who before were somewhat neutral, 37:11.080 --> 37:13.600 really turned against the US occupation. 37:13.600 --> 37:19.240 And we now see that since the killing of bin Laden, the rationale, not only in Afghanistan 37:19.240 --> 37:24.840 and Pakistan, but even among the US public, has really collapsed for the intervention 37:24.840 --> 37:25.920 in Afghanistan. 37:25.920 --> 37:28.760 For most Americans, that was the reason we went in. 37:28.760 --> 37:29.760 Now it's over. 37:29.760 --> 37:30.760 Now it's time to get out. 37:30.760 --> 37:33.700 And I hear that conversation over and over again. 37:33.700 --> 37:38.440 So I think that they held off on victory in many of these cases, because they wanted to 37:38.440 --> 37:44.280 cement that influence, either through military bases or dominating the economies. 37:44.280 --> 37:51.080 So just in conclusion, I want to go through using the analysis of kind of seeing the more 37:51.080 --> 37:57.480 permanent domination of a country after the war as one of the reasons for a war. 37:57.480 --> 38:04.120 We can obviously look at Iran and Syria as the foci now, whether or not it's about a 38:04.120 --> 38:10.480 nuclear program, whether or not it's about the very real human rights violations, the 38:10.480 --> 38:13.840 massacres really going on in Syria. 38:13.840 --> 38:20.040 There are massacres of protesters going on in Bahrain, in Yemen. 38:20.040 --> 38:22.680 But you don't see those on the front pages whatsoever. 38:22.680 --> 38:26.640 It's really Syria that's a focus right now. 38:26.640 --> 38:29.800 And same with Iran, the targeting of Iran. 38:29.800 --> 38:37.880 I think that when it comes to the very complex question of what would be the future, the 38:37.880 --> 38:44.120 ideal future of Palestine in the eyes of the U.S., I think there is a faction that is Israel 38:44.120 --> 38:45.400 right or wrong. 38:45.400 --> 38:50.280 I think it's also important to look at the possibility that there would be some kind 38:50.280 --> 38:52.840 of a settlement in the future. 38:52.840 --> 39:00.040 The CIA has played a large role, both in Israel and the Palestinian authority. 39:00.040 --> 39:03.960 And I think there are some within the U.S. government that would like to see some kind 39:03.960 --> 39:11.280 of U.S. role, permanent role, some even military bases or a military presence in the West Bank 39:11.280 --> 39:14.480 in particular as part of some kind of settlement. 39:14.480 --> 39:18.600 So that's something to think about whenever you hear about peace. 39:18.600 --> 39:26.840 Peace is great, but then is peace also becoming accompanied by greater domination? 39:26.840 --> 39:30.000 And so this is one of the things to be thinking about. 39:30.000 --> 39:31.640 We're already at war. 39:31.640 --> 39:33.200 It's not just drones. 39:33.200 --> 39:37.400 There are special forces raids in both Somalia and Yemen. 39:37.400 --> 39:39.400 There's been bombing. 39:39.400 --> 39:41.400 There have been ground attacks. 39:41.400 --> 39:51.680 So the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have expanded to Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia in a very 39:51.680 --> 39:52.840 systematic way. 39:52.840 --> 39:56.040 And we don't hear about it because Americans aren't being killed. 39:56.040 --> 40:02.200 And I think that's one of the tragedies is when you don't have Americans being killed, 40:02.200 --> 40:06.520 but you have foreign civilians being killed, the media doesn't pay as much attention. 40:06.520 --> 40:08.960 I think many Americans don't pay as much attention. 40:08.960 --> 40:14.920 I think there are possibilities also along the oil and gas pipelines in both Georgia 40:14.920 --> 40:20.440 and Azerbaijan of more direct to U.S. influence. 40:20.440 --> 40:26.320 In the Philippines, where the U.S. was kicked out of the bases in the early 90s, there's 40:26.320 --> 40:33.440 now a very systematic attempt under the Visiting Forces Agreement and the stationing of trainers 40:33.440 --> 40:40.080 against Muslim rebels in the south in Mindanao to have the U.S. get back into the Philippines. 40:40.080 --> 40:41.840 And I think that is happening now. 40:41.840 --> 40:45.920 And there's quite a large movement growing in the Philippines against that. 40:45.920 --> 40:51.080 And of course, we see the instability just this week, possibility of renewed conflict 40:51.080 --> 40:59.080 between North and South Korea, and a huge movement in South Korea against U.S. naval 40:59.080 --> 41:05.480 bases, air bases, that has been quite successful in winning public support in South Korea among 41:05.480 --> 41:07.400 farmers, among youth. 41:07.400 --> 41:10.640 You see in Okinawa quite a powerful movement. 41:10.640 --> 41:16.880 And so you really do see some successes in mobilizing people against these bases. 41:16.880 --> 41:21.960 And Jeju Island in particular, where farmers have been opposing a Navy base. 41:21.960 --> 41:27.880 And on the mainland, where farmers oppose the expansion of a base, not very successfully, 41:27.880 --> 41:35.960 but still, the U.S. is not popular in South Korea like it used to be, or seemingly popular. 41:35.960 --> 41:43.280 I think less so, I think Colombia, there's been a whole counterinsurgency campaign by 41:43.280 --> 41:48.000 the United States, which is becoming more unpopular among Colombians. 41:48.000 --> 41:53.600 In a sense, if you remember the 80s, Colombia is the new El Salvador and Venezuela is the 41:53.600 --> 41:54.600 new Nicaragua. 41:54.600 --> 41:57.520 It's really not that much different. 41:57.520 --> 42:05.240 But Chavez does seem to have some more stability than I would have thought, having been targeted 42:05.240 --> 42:07.280 so much by the United States. 42:07.280 --> 42:11.440 I think that the new place to really look is Africa, with AFRICOM. 42:11.440 --> 42:17.880 And I think that the intervention in Libya and the interventions in Somalia have been 42:17.880 --> 42:25.480 really to justify the existence of AFRICOM, or the AFRICA Command, which is headquartered 42:25.480 --> 42:32.920 in Germany, but I'm sure will be headquartered very soon in Tripoli. 42:32.920 --> 42:43.920 And you have a whole series of U.S. exercises of arming of the regimes in North Africa. 42:43.920 --> 42:49.160 So last thing I want to talk about is kind of the future, the positioning of new bases. 42:49.160 --> 42:55.160 And this comes out of the Rumsfeld Doctrine that's been taken up by, was taken up by Gates, 42:55.160 --> 42:57.000 was taken up by Panetta. 42:57.000 --> 43:02.520 And this is the idea of more small forward deployments and base access agreements. 43:02.520 --> 43:08.560 They know how unpopular it is to have these large communities of Americans move in to 43:08.560 --> 43:14.200 another country and kind of dominate the culture and the economy around these base communities. 43:14.200 --> 43:16.720 And so they want smaller bases. 43:16.720 --> 43:22.280 They want just the soldiers or airmen or marines themselves and not their families to join 43:22.280 --> 43:23.280 them. 43:23.280 --> 43:28.720 And so this is what we're seeing at Coffee Strong is more families are split up by deployments 43:28.720 --> 43:31.840 than used to be the case. 43:31.840 --> 43:37.960 More use of civilian contractors, more logistics and positioning supplies, less sprawling, 43:37.960 --> 43:41.120 less visible kind of presence. 43:41.120 --> 43:45.580 And this is what Rumsfeld called the lily pad strategy. 43:45.580 --> 43:51.880 And also to kind of use the shell game to move around bases from places where they're 43:51.880 --> 44:01.520 very unpopular like Germany, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, South Korea, Okinawa, Ecuador, Kyrgyzstan 44:01.520 --> 44:05.760 and to move them in places either where they're popular, which isn't very many places, or 44:05.760 --> 44:08.680 where the governments at least support them. 44:08.680 --> 44:15.040 So places like Romania, Kuwait, the Philippines, U.S. possessions like Guam and Hawaii. 44:15.040 --> 44:20.080 If they're kicked out of Korea or Okinawa, have them go to Hawaii or Guam. 44:20.080 --> 44:25.480 Peru or Colombia instead of Ecuador or Panama instead of Ecuador. 44:25.480 --> 44:31.520 So we see these very powerful movements in Okinawa. 44:31.520 --> 44:37.680 And when they're successful, the bases, the marines and the facilities are moved to a 44:37.680 --> 44:39.560 U.S. position like Guam. 44:39.560 --> 44:43.800 If there's opposition in Guam, they end up getting sent to Hawaii. 44:43.800 --> 44:48.480 And so the shell game of not only pitting these different territories against each other, 44:48.480 --> 44:55.200 but different anti-war and anti-bases movements against each other is a definite strategy 44:55.200 --> 44:56.200 of the United States. 44:56.200 --> 45:02.880 And that's why it's so important to have international unity and not just to say not in my backyard. 45:02.880 --> 45:09.040 So what John Lindsay Poland and I, the last thing I want to show you is we have a Google 45:09.040 --> 45:21.880 Earth site where you can actually download a database and superimpose it on Google Earth 45:21.880 --> 45:27.720 and show where the U.S. military bases are and be able to zoom in and actually identify 45:27.720 --> 45:29.600 those bases. 45:29.600 --> 45:32.800 So you can get that at the Transnational Institute. 45:32.800 --> 45:33.800 You could also email me. 45:33.800 --> 45:35.360 I could give you a direct link. 45:35.360 --> 45:39.560 I could show you, I think we're online, I think, too. 45:39.560 --> 45:45.320 And the other thing that we're doing is Militarism Watch, which is really building research skills 45:45.320 --> 45:49.240 to help with demilitarization activism. 45:49.240 --> 45:54.360 So one of my students, for instance, was looking at the use of depleted uranium at Joint Base 45:54.360 --> 45:56.360 Lewis-McChord. 45:56.360 --> 46:02.720 There are quite a few people who are doing Freedom of Information Act requests who are 46:02.720 --> 46:11.040 trying to look at some of the social situations around various bases or just looking at military 46:11.040 --> 46:12.720 budgets. 46:12.720 --> 46:13.720 There's a real need. 46:13.720 --> 46:18.880 And if there are people who are either in academia or just want to do things on their 46:18.880 --> 46:20.400 own, this is something that's very useful. 46:20.400 --> 46:23.480 There are very few people doing this kind of work. 46:23.480 --> 46:28.480 And the military, believe it or not, actually reveals a lot if you know where to look. 46:28.480 --> 46:31.920 And so it's one of the things that people can do on a low level. 46:31.920 --> 46:33.240 You can do it as an individual. 46:33.240 --> 46:38.760 You can do it as a small group, is to do research, either of the base near you or of bases elsewhere 46:38.760 --> 46:46.800 or of weapons sales to a particular country and kind of pierce that veil of secrecy that 46:46.800 --> 46:48.440 we see out there. 46:48.440 --> 46:54.500 A really good source, I think one of the best books that's out there on bases is an anthology 46:54.500 --> 46:58.140 edited by Katherine Lutz called The Bases of Empire. 46:58.140 --> 47:02.880 And I've used that in my class, the People's Geography of American Empire, because it not 47:02.880 --> 47:09.880 only gets into the depressing stuff about domination of a country or the environmental 47:09.880 --> 47:16.240 contamination or the assaults that have taken place against civilian women around bases, 47:16.240 --> 47:21.600 it also gets into some of the more hopeful things where we have seen in places like the 47:21.600 --> 47:32.360 Philippines, Ecuador, Saudi Arabia, Panama, many countries have ejected U.S. military 47:32.360 --> 47:33.840 bases. 47:33.840 --> 47:39.720 And there's been quite a successful movement even against U.S. installations like radar 47:39.720 --> 47:44.520 in Poland and Czech Republic, places where you wouldn't expect it. 47:44.520 --> 47:47.320 And so there really is a global network. 47:47.320 --> 47:52.920 If you go to NoBases.org, the International Network for the Abolition of Foreign Military 47:52.920 --> 47:54.800 Bases, that's a real goal. 47:54.800 --> 47:57.400 It's really easy for people to understand. 47:57.400 --> 47:59.920 No foreign military bases. 47:59.920 --> 48:04.480 No military bases by any country outside its own borders. 48:04.480 --> 48:05.920 It's a pretty simple idea. 48:05.920 --> 48:09.720 Would save us $100 billion a year. 48:09.720 --> 48:15.880 And it probably would cut down on the number of wars that are happening. 48:15.880 --> 48:20.360 Do I teach that at Evergreen? 48:20.360 --> 48:22.080 I do teach it at Evergreen. 48:22.080 --> 48:26.160 But I do it in a way where there's two sides and where there's debate. 48:26.160 --> 48:31.840 I'm giving you my opinion. 48:31.840 --> 48:33.800 I think I would say it with the facts. 48:33.800 --> 48:34.800 Sure. 48:34.800 --> 48:35.800 I mean, we could look at the military budget. 48:35.800 --> 48:39.240 And actually, what my class has done is really interesting. 48:39.240 --> 48:41.800 We do a little workshop. 48:41.800 --> 48:45.880 How would you build an alliance around a military base? 48:45.880 --> 48:56.560 I think we use a fictional town called Okeecoma, which is a cross between Okinawa and Tacoma. 48:56.560 --> 49:01.440 And we say, who are the people who are affected by this military base? 49:01.440 --> 49:06.360 So there are some students who are the environmental groups, some who are the women's groups, some 49:06.360 --> 49:10.120 who are the workers who work on the base. 49:10.120 --> 49:12.440 There are some, yeah, they're role play. 49:12.440 --> 49:14.360 There are some who are local business leaders. 49:14.360 --> 49:18.720 There are some who are soldiers or military families. 49:18.720 --> 49:23.120 So that community you have around any military base in the world. 49:23.120 --> 49:27.120 And what is it that you can talk with each other about? 49:27.120 --> 49:32.640 What is it that might be a basis for dialogue between all those different people who come 49:32.640 --> 49:36.560 from completely different places, completely different interests? 49:36.560 --> 49:40.960 I've done that workshop now three times, and it's always the same result. 49:40.960 --> 49:43.120 It's very interesting. 49:43.120 --> 49:44.760 Health. 49:44.760 --> 49:49.400 Health is the first thing that creates a common dialogue. 49:49.400 --> 49:55.840 So the common environment, which is often contaminated around a base, and also the social 49:55.840 --> 50:06.520 costs, the stress that is put on, in particular, women in the community, the kind of work 50:06.520 --> 50:08.880 and conditions that soldiers have to work under. 50:08.880 --> 50:10.240 It's very dangerous work. 50:10.240 --> 50:11.840 There are a lot of accidents. 50:11.840 --> 50:17.160 So health and safety seems to be the one common denominator. 50:17.160 --> 50:21.880 And I see that in some places in the world, it's been quite successful. 50:21.880 --> 50:29.440 Like in Puerto Rico, they got rid of a naval bombing range by using that safety, health 50:29.440 --> 50:31.040 and safety argument. 50:31.040 --> 50:38.120 No chemicals, no unexploded ordnance, bombs flying around. 50:38.120 --> 50:40.920 That's bad for kids. 50:40.920 --> 50:45.400 And that's how they've gotten rid of some of these bases, is using that very human argument. 50:45.400 --> 50:50.280 Do you have any thoughts on all the ways in which our situation is similar, because we're 50:50.280 --> 50:53.280 occupied by so many large bases nearby? 50:53.280 --> 50:56.440 And if it's different from the Philippines, then in what way? 50:56.440 --> 51:00.600 Well let me just give you one example in our area. 51:00.600 --> 51:07.280 The Nisqually Nation, the Nisqually tribe, which is down between Tacoma and Olympia. 51:07.280 --> 51:12.920 And they were a major, they figured in the treaty rights campaign. 51:12.920 --> 51:20.840 They had quite a large reservation, but they lost 70% of it in 1917 to form Fort Lewis. 51:20.840 --> 51:24.520 Nisqually means people of the prairie, Squally Ops. 51:24.520 --> 51:31.240 And their prairie, where they gathered camas bulbs, where the women gathered camas bulbs, 51:31.240 --> 51:37.480 and they harvested other root crops, and they had horses out there on the prairie. 51:37.480 --> 51:42.920 That prairie is now the firing range at Fort Lewis, where they test the strikers, the 51:42.920 --> 51:43.920 howitzers. 51:43.920 --> 51:46.440 It's a very militarized area. 51:46.440 --> 51:55.000 They used to shoot over the reservation into Thurston County, and the Nisqually very much 51:55.000 --> 51:56.000 objected to that. 51:56.000 --> 52:04.040 They objected when the army ran its tanks through salmon spawning areas, when they destroyed 52:04.040 --> 52:10.200 part of the prairie, the groundwater became contaminated. 52:10.200 --> 52:17.580 So Nisqually, I think, probably played a role in the canceling of a proposed missile system 52:17.580 --> 52:20.360 that would have gone in at Fort Lewis. 52:20.360 --> 52:29.880 So you can see the colonization of Native America was the template, was the model for 52:29.880 --> 52:36.760 the US spreading its military, its imperial domination abroad. 52:36.760 --> 52:39.080 And you can really see that in the Philippine-American War. 52:39.080 --> 52:45.080 That movie by John Sayles about the Philippines called... 52:45.080 --> 52:50.040 I can't remember the name of it, but it really makes the point that the soldiers were told... 52:50.040 --> 52:53.160 This is kind of a continuation of the Indian Wars. 52:53.160 --> 52:59.200 And you can really see in the book Facing West, you can see how Vietnam, both the Philippines 52:59.200 --> 53:05.280 and later Vietnam, were a westward extension of the Indian Wars, and how the people were 53:05.280 --> 53:06.280 understood. 53:06.280 --> 53:10.880 I think when you look at Iraq and Afghanistan, you hear all the time about Indian country. 53:10.880 --> 53:12.080 What was Bin Laden called? 53:12.080 --> 53:14.120 He was called Geronimo. 53:14.120 --> 53:21.080 And so you really have the colonization of North America, of the nations of North America. 53:21.080 --> 53:26.280 The army forts were military bases and are military bases. 53:26.280 --> 53:32.380 That that was the structure that was exported to other countries. 53:32.380 --> 53:37.360 So we really can understand what's going on in these countries and how there's a global 53:37.360 --> 53:38.920 war on tribes. 53:38.920 --> 53:44.160 And all the talk about tribes in Afghanistan and Iraq is really modeled. 53:44.160 --> 53:50.520 It goes back into that Western American consciousness about who are the inferior people and who are 53:50.520 --> 53:52.320 the superior people. 53:52.320 --> 53:58.640 So I think studying here really helps shed some light on what's going on over there. 53:58.640 --> 54:05.040 And studying over there in the Middle East is a really good insight into our own history. 54:05.040 --> 54:09.760 And what's weird is that in the Pentagon, they're now studying the Indian Wars and how 54:09.760 --> 54:16.320 they divided and conquered tribes in order to study how they can do the same thing, in 54:16.320 --> 54:20.960 particular in Afghanistan and Pakistan. 54:20.960 --> 54:22.960 And they're doing a lot of that kind of study. 54:22.960 --> 54:28.960 So we're talking something like a trillion dollars a year and the Iraq War itself by 54:28.960 --> 54:32.960 Joseph Stiglitz's five trillion now, or I was in three trillions. 54:32.960 --> 54:40.960 The consensus was the American Empire not will collapse, but already is collapsed. 54:40.960 --> 54:50.960 Yeah, I think definitely all empires have overextended themselves geographically, economically, 54:50.960 --> 54:53.200 and we can go back to the Roman Empire. 54:53.200 --> 55:00.440 And we have two very recent examples, the British Empire, where Britain has become more 55:00.440 --> 55:07.040 or less a second rate power, kind of licking its wounds and doesn't have the global reach 55:07.040 --> 55:12.960 that it used to, but it's more of a normal country than it used to be. 55:12.960 --> 55:19.520 Russia, what the end of the Soviet Union in 1991 wasn't just the end of the Soviet Union 55:19.520 --> 55:24.760 and the end of the process that started in 1917 of the Russian Revolution, it was the 55:24.760 --> 55:27.560 collapse of the Russian Empire that went back centuries. 55:27.560 --> 55:30.560 And I don't think many Americans understand that. 55:30.560 --> 55:37.960 And now you have Russia really examining what is, who are we if we're not this large empire 55:37.960 --> 55:42.560 and we're becoming a normal country. 55:42.560 --> 55:50.800 And I think when we talk as the peace and justice movement about the future, we really 55:50.800 --> 55:55.720 should look at plausible scenarios that I think most people can grasp. 55:55.720 --> 56:01.240 And I don't think most people can grasp the sudden collapse of the United States or even 56:01.240 --> 56:07.820 of the American Empire, but I think that they can envision the United States becoming a 56:07.820 --> 56:09.580 normal country. 56:09.580 --> 56:15.280 And I think that that maybe is a way that we can phrase it, is do we want to always 56:15.280 --> 56:24.040 have these wars that are not only killing foreign civilians but killing our own? 56:24.040 --> 56:30.320 And do we want to have our economy tied to this very shaky and risky proposition, or 56:30.320 --> 56:34.920 do we want to try and become one of the 200 countries in the world? 56:34.920 --> 56:38.560 And there are so many advantages to doing that. 56:38.560 --> 56:41.720 So I don't think it's a utopian vision. 56:41.720 --> 56:43.840 I think it's something that's very plausible. 56:43.840 --> 56:48.640 And I think the strongest argument for it is that it's underway whether we like it or 56:48.640 --> 56:51.600 not and so we better get used to it. 56:51.600 --> 56:58.080 And so I'm actually in a strange way, I'm scared to death of a war in Iran, but in a 56:58.080 --> 57:03.480 strange way with the young people that I've met and their attitude towards war. 57:03.480 --> 57:06.960 And I'm not just talking about it evergreen. 57:06.960 --> 57:13.400 I think that that idea of the United States becoming a normal country without imperial 57:13.400 --> 57:19.400 reach is attractive right now with the economy the way it is, with our culture the way it 57:19.400 --> 57:20.400 is. 57:20.400 --> 57:24.080 I think it's a window of opportunity we haven't had in my lifetime. 57:24.080 --> 57:50.160 Okay, well thank you very much.