What an Occupation Looks Like

Posted on December 12, 2009
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This is a slightly edited version of an email sent out by World Can’t Wait Member Richie Marini.

Many of us in World Can’t Wait have been out in the street this week, angry about Obama sending another "30,000" troops. I often wonder why the rest of the public aren’t as angry. So this morning when reading NATO Pledges 7,000 Troops, but Avoids Details
 
I did a little basic math – simple addition of numbers from articles I have read recently.

40,000 Current NATO Troops
68,000 Current American Troops
68,197 Current DOD Contractors
8,000 Additional NATO Troops (headline says 7 but read the article)
34,000 Additional American Troops (thanks to oBOMBa)
35,000 Additional DOD Contracters (estimated)
———— ——— ——— ——— ——-
Total of 253,197 Occupiers

Now who’s seen the movie “Re-thinking Afghanistan”? In that movie someone states that 250,000 troops would be needed to conquer and occupy Afghanistan (which we will now have in 2010). There are an estimated 28 million people in Afghanistan. So that comes to one foreign occupier for every 100 people. Now we’re of course also "building a security force" inside the country which will be roughly another what 200,000 Afghans…so now we are looking at 1 troop for every 60 people?

What would that look like in NYC? 1 troop on every subway car? 1 troop on every bus? 67 troops on each ferry trip? Lets say Staten Island has a population of 500,000 people (I know it’s less but lets say 500,000) that would be 8,333 troops stationed on Staten Island. Staten Island is 60 square miles. So there would be what 138 troops in every square mile? That’s about 1 troop every 40 ft.  

Every 40 feet in no matter what direction I walk I would see a man in a uniform holding a gun.

So CAN YOU TELL ME WHAT AN OCCUPATION LOOKS LIKE?

 

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