Tom Englehart discusses the military’s profligate use of $400/gallon (and even $800/gallon) gasoline in the Middle East. It’s a symptom of a much bigger problem:

So here’s a question at a moment when financial mania has Washington by the throat: How would you define the state of mind of our war-makers, who are carrying on as if trillion-dollar wars were an American birthright, as if the only sensible role for the United States was to eternally police the planet, and as if garrisoning U.S. troops, corporate mercenaries, and special operations forces in scores and scores of countries was the essence of life as it should be lived on this planet?

How many military bases does the United States have, by the way? Gloria Shur Bilchik of Occasional Planet does her best to provide an answer to this straight-forward question:

You can’t get a consistent answer from news stories, that’s for sure. Recent articles, media reports and op-eds peg the number variously at 460, 507, 560, 662 and more than 1,000 . . . According to the Department of Defense’s 2010 Base Structure Report, as of 2009, the US military maintained 662 foreign sites in 38 countries around the world. . . . the official US military tally underreports our presence by nearly 500 bases.

Why not cut the military budget at this time of purported austerity? It’s about what you’d expect from a bunch of psychopathic leaders, people not like you and me, people who cease serving as representatives of the People soon after hitting Washington D.C. and getting high on a non-ending hit of campaign cash.