The US army is everywhere.

I include this because sometimes we think of Iraq and Afghanistan, and some of the more notable encampments, Japan, Germany, Britain as the total footprint of the US military. But that's not it at all. The US has active bases in about two thirds of the countries in the world. All those fears of world domination and empire are misplaced, the US military already is the Roman Empire. Minimal "reaction forces" and corrupt local vichy politicians.

From the Christian Science Monitor. Dateline: Lamu, Kenya.

It is a strange place to find the US military on active duty. The soldiers on patrol here are part of the 1,500-strong Horn of Africa Combined Joint Task Force stationed in a former French Foreign Legion base in the tiny Red Sea state of Djibouti.

The primary reason for the military manpower and its associated hardware lies just up the coast: the lawless, failed state of Somalia, long seen as a hotbed of Islamic fundamentalism. ....

American troops regularly support the Kenyan Navy as they search boats for drugs, equipment, or illegal agents trying to slip into Kenya.

They have on occasion marched in full combat gear through Lamu's narrow lanes in a show of force, especially during a tense period when investigators linked the area to a series of terror attacks in Kenya and Tanzania. ....

That's where a small contingent of the US Army's 412th Civil Affairs Battalion steps in.

The four-man team is helping facilitate a public-works campaign designed to ease hardships in poor communities, win loyalties, and cut off Islamic fanaticism before it can take root.