226 An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said of the Micronesians: "There
are only ninety thousand people out there. Who gives a damn?"1 6
This is a statement of permissive genocide.
By the beginning of the twenty-first century, the United States
operated more than 900 military bases around the world, including
287 in Germany, 130 in Japan, 106 in South Korea, 89 in Italy, 57
in the British Isles, 21 in Portugal, and 19 in Tu rkey. The number
also comprised additional bases or installations located in Aruba,
Australia, Djibouti, Egypt, Israel, Singapore, Thailand, Kyrgyzstan,
Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Crete, Sicily, Ice
land, Romania, Bulgaria, Honduras, Colombia, and Cuba (Guan
tanamo Bay), among many other. locations in some 150 countries,
along with those recently added in Iraq and Afghanistan. 17
In her book The Militarization of Indian Country, Anishinaabe
activist and writer Winona LaDuke analyzes the continuing nega
tive effects of the military on Native Americans, considering the
consequences wrought on Native economy, land, future, and people,
especially Native combat veterans and their families. Indigenous ter
ritories in New Mexico bristle with nuclear weapons storage, and
Shoshone and Paiute territories in Nevada are scarred by decades of
aboveground and underground nuclear weapons testing. The Navajo
Nation and some New Mexico Pueblos have experienced decades of
uranium strip mining, the pollution of water, and subsequent deadly
health effects. "I am awed by the impact of the military on the world
and on Native America," LaDuke writes. "It is pervasive." 18
Political scientist Cynthia Enloe, who specializes in US foreign
policy and the military, observes that US culture has become even
more militarized since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon. Her analysis of this trend draws on a feminist perspective:Militarization ... [is] happening at the individual level, when
a woman who has a son is persuaded that the best way she can
be a good mother is to allow the military recruiter to recruit
her son so her son will get off the couch. When she is persuaded
to let him go, even if reluctantly, she's being militarized. She's
not as militarized as somebody who is a Special Forces soldier,
but she's being militarized all the same. Somebody who gets