Why Does The US Military Still Have Bases in Japan?

Recent reports indicate that President Obama and Japan's Prime Minister are holding discussions about relocating the US base situated on the Japanese island of Okinawa.

"The White House says President Barack Obama and Japanese prime minister have expressed satisfaction with plans to move a U.S. Marine base to a less crowded part of the Japanese island of Okinawa.

Details of their conversation came as Washington and Tokyo issued a joint statement outlining a new agreement on keeping the base on the island of Okinawa. Hatoyama's decision disappointed many of the island's residents, who complain about base-related noise, pollution and crime."

The article discusses some concerns that certain Japanese have with the US retaining a base on the island. However, there is no discussion of any possible misgivings that Americans might have to operating an overseas military base in this day and age.

An American taxpayer might ask: why does the US need to maintain a military base in Japan (or anywhere in Europe for that matter), more than a half a century after the second world war concluded? The cost is prohibitive, and given the sky-high deficits and monstrous public debt we face as a country, surely the taxes used to fund this and other bases are better off being used to retire our public debt, or better yet, not even be collected in the first place.

The annual funding required by the American military is astronomical - reports have it totaling at least $700 billion per year. And that does not include the cost of state reserve units, that are often co-opted to fight overseas wars on behalf of the federal government.

Is anyone in the federal government capable of rethinking America's priorities, and to stop mindlessly continuing whatever policies were put in place in prior years?

Let's bring the troops home, and make the annual cost of our military a small fraction of what it is today.