Girding the globe

"One year after U.S. tanks rolled through Iraq and more than two years after the United States bombed the Taliban out of power in Afghanistan," writes James Sterngold of the SF Chronicle, the Bush administration "has instituted what some experts describe as the most militarized foreign policy machine in modern history.

"The policy has involved not just resorting to military action, or the threat of action, but constructing an arc of new facilities in such places as Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Qatar and Djibouti that the Pentagon calls 'lily pads.' They are seen not merely as a means of defending the host countries -- the traditional Cold War role of such installations -- but as jumping-off points for future 'preventive wars' and military missions."