The Smithsonian Magazine this month published a stunning map detailing just how expansive the US’ post-9/11 “war on terror” has become, demonstrating that contrary to the common assumption that it’s “winding down” more than 17 years later, it actually continues to
grow and has now spread to more than 40% of the world’s countries.

This includes US military and support personnel engaged in
ongoing missions in 80 nations on six continents, according to Brown
University’s Costs of War Project at the Watson Institute for
International and Public Affairs, which has recently calculated that
since 2001 the US has spent $5,900,000,000,000 on war, mostly in
places like Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, and Yemen — where US
military operations have become more or less permanent, with no
consideration of ending them under any circumstances.

The map creators for The Smithsonian culled information from foreign
government sources, published and unpublished reports, military
websites and geographical databases, as well as foreign embassies
and interviews with journalists and academics, according to
Smithsonian.com.

And the authors of the study even note they were “conservative” in
their numbers concerning US military and State Dept. personnel
engaged in the “terror war” throughout the globe as of 2019.

The map demonstrates the following:

1) We found that, contrary to what most Americans believe, the war on
terror is not winding down—it has spread to more than 40 percent of
the world’s countries. The war isn’t being waged by the military
alone, which has spent $1.9 trillion fighting terrorism since 2001.
The State Department has spent $127 billion in the last 17 years to
train police, military and border patrol agents in many countries
and to develop antiterrorism education programs, among other
activities.

2) The authors also noted that US counter-terror operations abroad “are likely more extensive than this map shows,” especially as this is
merely based on non-classified information.

3) Unless they end in disaster, most US missions remain in the
shadows, unknown to all but a few Americans. And yet last year
alone, US commandos deployed to 149 countries — about 75% of the
nations on the planet. At the halfway mark of this year, according
to figures provided to TomDispatch by U.S. Special Operations
Command (USSOCOM or SOCOM),  the US Empire’s most elite troops have already carried out missions in 133 countries. That’s nearly as many deployments as occurred during the last year of the Obama
administration and more than double those of the final days of
George W. Bush’s White House.

4) In 2017, US Special Operations forces, including Navy SEALs
and Army Green Berets, deployed to 149 countries around the world,
according to figures provided to TomDispatch by US Special
Operations Command.  That’s about 75% of the nations on the planet
and represents a jump from the 138 countries that saw such
deployments in 2016 under the Obama administration.  It’s also a
jump of nearly 150% from the last days of George W. Bush’s White
House.  This record-setting number of deployments comes as American commandos are battling a plethora of terror groups in quasi-wars that stretch from Africa and the Middle East to Asia.

“Most Americans would be amazed to learn that US Special
Operations Forces have been deployed to three quarters of the
nations on the planet,” observes William Hartung, the director of
the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International
Policy.  “There is little or no transparency as to what they are
doing in these countries and whether their efforts are promoting
security or provoking further tension and conflict.”

“Since 9/11, we expanded the size of our force by almost 75% in
order to take on mission-sets that are likely to endure,” SOCOM’s
Thomas told the Senate Armed Services Committee in May.  Since 2001, from the pace of operations to their geographic sweep, the
activities of US Special Operations forces (SOF) have, in fact,
grown in every conceivable way.  On any given day, about 8,000
special operators — from a command numbering roughly 70,000 — are
deployed in approximately 80 countries.

5) Internationally, there are just under 200,000 troops that are
stationed in 177 countries throughout the world. Ultimately, the best answer is that there are 196 countries in the world. So, the US has troops in 90% of the countries on the planet. Combined with the Pentagon policy of Full Spectrum Dominance and our habit of
destroying one country after another, haven’t we way outdone Nazi
Germany?

6) Costs of post 9/11 US wars here: close to $6 trillion. How big is a single trillion? Click here.

7) Another mathematician puts it like this: “1 million seconds is
about 11.5 days, 1 billion seconds is about 32 years while a
trillion seconds is equal to 32,000 years.” [x 5.9]

Thanks to Vermonter Jacki Brook for sharing this story.