WHY AMERICAN MILITARY ARE STATIONED IN GERMANY AND JAPAN

My sources say over 33,000 US military personnel live in Germany, and 50,000 in Japan when their census came in in 2013.

I’m part of the chorus asking, “Why?”

Then I remember WWII.

I’m a history guy with a history degree and twenty years in a history museum. So I’m a history guy? No more than you. Just enough to sound like a kook.

I don’t remember WWII any more than anyone else who saw Saving Private Ryan, but I’ve read books, the sort of books that made my fifth grade self shudder that humanity could be so cruel.

Then I read more and more

Germany and Japan both dipped into the ugly side of human nature when they decided to rampage the shit out of their respective regions.

It wasn’t enough to dominate and destroy their declared enemies, they needed to humiliate and degrade them too, then commit the sort of atrocities that make the pages of history books drip in horror.

The creepy part of Germany and Japanese in WWII was the way they included science in their houses of horror. These were civilized people who knew the power of education and how to weaponize human knowledge for evil.

How evil

Real evil. The most evil. The evilest sort of evil. But that’s old news and no one wants to talk about it. I walked around Paris and found it hard to imagine it being an occupied city. One stop on the tour was a remembrance of school children rounded up and sent to death camps.

The nation that lead the effort to vanquish evil in Europe and the Pacific, that be us, keeps 83,000 military people out in the field.

Why a military occupation? 

Because the Japan and German nations both posed such a threat to the world then, they still need to be monitored with the excuse of holding Russia in check on the continent and China in check on the seas.

But it feels more about Germany and Japan.

When those two went off the rails they didn’t stop. I’m not saying the cruel and heartless acts in other parts of the world don’t compare, but they aren’t on the same industrialized scale of human agony.

These were smart nations applying their military smarts the wrong way.

The pain and suffering the world endured through two global wars still echoes in the minds of scholars, if not veterans. It should echo most in the hearts and minds of American leaders with the power to put U.S. military lives on the line.

Watching a movie, or documentary, or listening to the half-baked opinions of over caffeinated gas bags, is not the same as getting a grip on the American sphere of influence. It’s a protective umbrella against a storm of death and dismemberment; it’s the sunshine, not the clouds.

I’m a fan of treaties and allegiances that keep the darkness of the human soul locked away from ethnic cleaners and bump stock spray. I’m a bigger fan of peace, love, and understanding in the neighborhood.

Are you a fan of peace and love, too? Let’s start there.