Where in the world are tomorrow’s veterans?

(Originally published 11/11/2014)

Veterans’ Day was Tuesday, the day when we all said “thanks” to the people who have put their lives on the line for our country for 238 years.  Day after day, year after year, these men and women do the hard and dangerous work that our country demands of them.  Any of us, left, right, or independent, may have occasional quarrels with the people or polices that put these people in harm’s way, but no one should quarrel with the gratitude they so richly deserve for going there.  In recent years our military has been asked to shoulder a greater burden as our global ambitions have grown.  It can be too easy to say “thanks” and then forget about our sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers who are stationed far from home.  To recognize Veterans Day this year, along with our heartfelt thanks, we’d like to remind everyone where today’s soldiers, tomorrows veterans, are serving…

We’ll start, as so much research does these days, with a briefing from Wikipedia:

“The military of the United States is deployed in more than 150 countries around the world, with over 160,000 of its active-duty personnel serving outside the United States and its territories and an additional 110,000 deployed in various contingency operations. US troops are spread across the globe: approximately 68,000 are stationed in Europe; approximately 80,000 in East Asia and the Pacific region; nearly 4,900 in North Africa, the Near East, and South Asia; over 1,750 in the Western Hemisphere; nearly 400 in Sub-Saharan Africa; and less than 100 in states of the former Soviet Union.  Of those in Europe, most of the military personnel are located at installations activated during the Cold War, by which the US government sought to challenge the Soviet Union in the aftermath of World War II.  U.S. personnel are seeing active combat in Afghanistan. Others are deployed as part of several peacekeeping missions, military attachés, or are part of embassy and consulate security.”

Numbers don’t tell the whole story, though, so here are two maps that bring it all home…

Even the most detailed description of overall deployment don’t tell the details of the story.  Here are three articles that discuss smaller aspects of the big picture…

There’s a cost in both blood and treasure to having a worldwide military presence. This report from the Rand Corporation gets into all the bean counting. It’s a big stack of beans.

As a Democrat, Barack Obama theoretically represents a less militarized alternative to the Republicans. Does his use of the military bear that out?  The Guardian tells the tale.

Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Middle East get the bulk of the press these days. Here’s a report on 5 of the places our soldiers are stationed that you probably don’t know about.

Finally, as part of our Veterans Day coverage, we’d like to direct you to two other stories and offer a final, sincere, heartfelt “Thank You” to all our soldiers past, present, and future.

Medic in famous photo dies after PTSD struggle Army Times July 3, 2008… During the first week of the war in Iraq, a Military Times photographer captured the arresting image of Army Spc. Joseph Patrick Dwyer as he raced through a battle zone clutching a tiny Iraqi boy named Ali. The photo was hailed as a portrait of the heart behind the U.S. military machine, and Doc Dwyer’s concerned face graced the pages of newspapers across the country. But rather than going on to enjoy the public affection for his act of heroism, he was consumed by the demons of combat stress he could not exorcise. For the medic who cared for the wounds of his combat buddies as they pushed toward Baghdad, the battle for his own health proved too much to bear…

Thanks is more than a word, it means keeping promises Tom Dwyer Newsletter, June 1, 2012…  Saying “Thank You” is not enough. We, as a country, have made promises to the men and women of our military and we’ve done a horrible job of keeping those promises. Blue Star Families is a group formed by military spouses to support military families in the challenges of military life. They surveyed their members to find out what their top issues of concern were, and we took a look at how our country is addressing those concerns. It’s not pretty.