Bagram is 'the centerpiece for the CENTCOM Master Plan for future access to and operations in Central Asia'

How can a government that maintains more than 800 military facilities in more than 140 different foreign countries be anything other than an imperial power? The hundreds of thousands of troops who operate those bases and conduct operations from them, not to mention the approximately 125,000 sailors and Marines aboard the U.S. warships that cruise the oceans, are not going door to door selling Girl Scout cookies. United States of America is the name; intimidation is the game.

Of course, the kingpins who control this massive machinery of coercion never describe it in such terms. In their lexis, American motives and actions are invariably noble. . . .

Yet, from time to time, a U.S. leader lets slip an expression so revealing that it warrants a thousand times greater weight . . . In seeking funds in 2007 for construction of a $62 million ammunition storage facility at Bagram Air Base, Admiral William J. Fallon, then the commander of the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), referred to Bagram as "the centerpiece for the CENTCOM Master Plan for future access to and operations in Central Asia."