Perhaps we should change our politics.

In his book Nemesis the late professor of Asian studies Chalmers Johnson stated the United States has over 700 military bases world wide. He further states that the military base is how our (the United States) empire is propagated. He asserts that to maintain an empire or to preserve our individual freedoms and culture without slipping into fascist dictatorship is the crossroad which all empires ultimately face. He represents in the case of England how this was accomplished successfully while in the case of Rome the divestiture of empire came in the form of collapse. Think of the power requirements of each one of those military bases. Think of the fuel costs to operate all of the vehicles in the air on land and at sea and the fuel for emergency power back up generators each base has or more regularly the monitary costs to receive that power from commercial grids in host countries. Factor in the cost of personnel and household goods in storage and the cost of accommodations for military families living over seas. Factor in the costs of readiness exercises and standard evaluation teams traveling around the globe to maintain the quality of that military presence. There are plenty of estimates how much all of this costs. It's going to cost even more now that our 10 year treasury bonds are not triple A rated. The same old politics needs more time and revenues for more military strategic planning.