Pentagon officials say leaving zero troops in Afghanistan after 2014 would not be good strategy, but if Afghanistan doesn’t give US troops legal immunity, it’s the likeliest outcome.
SOURCE: Leaving zero troops in Afghanistan? It’s a serious option, Pentagon says. – CSMonitor.com.
Wouldn’t that be something. I think it would be a first in my lifetime that we didn’t leave soldiers after the battle is over. We pay huge amounts of our taxes to keep our young kids in over a hundred countries throughout the world. For some reason we just can’t seem to get out completely when we get out.
Wouldn’t it be something to leave a country to its own fate instead of trying to intervene and force our will? We don’t need to be the policemen of the world. In reality it probably causes many more problems that it solves. Why can’t we let people be responsible for themselves? I think it is because the very nature of many of us is to be quite fearful of the world. We simply can’t accept that others might want to go a different path that we want them to go.
Zero troops behind. I know our generals don’t like the idea but it sounds like a good idea to me. Maybe we should try it at least once in a while?
RJ's Corner 
Heavens, we are still in Korea 50+ years later, not to mention all sorts of military forces and bases in Germany 60 years after WWII. Don’t we still have an air base in Japan? Apparently even our allies can’t take care of themselves without our perpetual “help.”
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From what I have found we have about 200,000 soldiers in more than 130 foreign countries. We spend about $100 billion dollars a year to keep them there. Including their families and contract employees to service them there are probably more than 500,000!
Can you imagine how much good that money would have it we spent it on reducing our deficits, educating our youth, repairing our rusting infrastructure and taking care of the least of these?
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This is an interesting website for information on troops http://www.vetfriends.com/US-deployments-overseas/
I understand the bases in Japan and Germany- but not the number of people. Air craft have to refuel and sailors need to get off ships. I think these are going away pretty quickly. We signed treaties that keep us in Korea and Japan. They should have put an expiration date on those….
My understanding is that it was an agreement that Obama made to leave troops in Afghanistan- so that is what the military planned for. They have moved that mission (thank God). We do not belong in the Middle East- ever.
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I agree, especially with the last part Janette. I worked beside two engineers from the Middle East for a couple of year and their very personalities screamed of over emotions in any kind of conflict. I suspect they were some what typical but couldn’t say for sure.
The Middle East is just a hotbed and as you say we should stay out as much as possible. If it weren’t for the oil I imagine we would. That is another reason why we should all be more “green”. I would love to drive a car that got 80+ per gallon; if only they weren’t so expensive.
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