Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

Like it or not, we do have explicit or implicit security arrangements with various countries, and feel the need to be able to project force from something other than aircraft carriers.

Ref-0213-US-Military-Bases-and-Facilities-Middle-East.pdf (americansecurityproject.org)

I don't personally think of the UAE as a "murderous dictatorship".  It's an interesting place, I've been there.

lmfao yeah, you're right, UAE is totally a bastion of freedom. The tribal familial dictatorship there totally allows people freedom of expression, voting, formation of political parties, they never arrest people on trumped up charges, and totally never torture people either. Great humans rights record, that one! Lol.

US bases are for force projection/domination of the world. That's it. They do not exist to "provide security" or "promote freedom". That is propaganda. Fairytales children tell themselves.

US has long track record of having military bases in countries with horrific dictatorships and supporting those dictators to the hilt. For example Marcos in the Philippines, which at one point in the 80s, the US had close to 20,000 troops in bases in that country, all while Marcos was stealing the wealth of the country, imprisoning people without charge, torturing, and slaughtering hundreds of thousands of his own citizens and ruling that country with an iron fist. The US supported Marcos right to the end, and then when that dictatorship was toppled and the new govt kicked the US out, the US allowed Marcos and his family safe harbor and they were exiled to the US. His son actually just took power in the Philippines, and wouldn't you know, US is going hard in the paint and just secured a deal this year with the Marcos JR govt to return to the Philippines and open 4 new military bases there.....crazy how that works....what a coincidence.

 It's one of the many tools which the US has used to dominate the entire world.

TBH, I'm perfectly OK with the US dominating the entire world.  It's worked out A-OK for the last 80+ years, even if we had to spill some blood along the way.  And we only kill those who "need" killin'.  

TBH, I'm perfectly OK with the US dominating the entire world.  It's worked out A-OK for the last 80+ years, even if we had to spill some blood along the way.  And we only kill those who "need" killin'. 

Great, I wonder if those killed see it that way.
Aside from that, just imagine you were born and grew up in a marginal, ho-hum country.  Over the course of your lifetime, some other country that doesn't speak your language or seems to share many of your culture's values dominates the entire globe, militarily.  It's defense budget is as much as the next 13 countries, 12 of which are allies.  
And when that country was directly attacked, it took over another country having nothing to do with that attack.
.
I doubt you'd be "perfectly OK" with that country.  

The UAE occupies a rather critical "choke point" for international trade, and is across from a country that speaks harshly about the US and our allies, I'd think our bases there are more oriented to Iran than propping up UAE (which doesn't need our help in that regard anyway).  The concept, in theory, is to prevent conflict by being in position if anything bad happens.

Now, one can argue we should leave these areas alone and let them all deal with whatever themselves.  But the bases do provide for the US to project force without an aicraft carrier.  I don't believe we have these bases to prop up evil dictatorships, that makes no sense to me.  We have them to deter potential enemies.

(The UAE is an interesting place and I wonder if they have longer term stability with their social structure and treatment of workers.  It's hypermodern in most places, I wondered where they got all that money ....  ).

where do you think all of those Gulf family dictatorship states have gotten vast majority of their weapons systems & military/intelligence training from? the US military industrial complex. they all absolutely need our help in maintaining & modernizing their militaries and intelligence services- which they in turn use to maintain their dictatorships.

Glad you brought up Iran, a country that wouldn't be as royally fked up as it is today if the US and it's CIA hadn't overthrown a democratically elected secularist gov't in 1953 and installed a puppet dictator who proceeded to rape, pillage, jail, torture, and murder an entire country for the next 26 years before the people inside that country finally rose up and deposed him. In that power vacuum a bunch of nut-job theocrats seized power and well it's been a total fkn sh!tshow ever since. Just another complete failure in a long list of horrific blowback that winds up biting us in the arse in the long run from the CIA/US State Dept doing shady fked up illegal things all around the world.

TBH, I'm perfectly OK with the US dominating the entire world.  It's worked out A-OK for the last 80+ years, even if we had to spill some blood along the way.  And we only kill those who "need" killin'. 

And we often kill a bunch of people who don't "need killin"..... there was zero justification for the US to launch a full scale invasion and occupation of Iraq. That was one of the greatest crimes this country has ever committed. Or to stay in Afghanistan for 20+ f'n years. Or to bomb the shit out of Libya. Or to launch operation timber sycamore in Syria (in which US basically armed terrorist AQ off-shoots to fight the Assad regime) and then proceed to bomb the living fkn sh!t out of that country for years. US is still occupying 1/3rd of Syria as we speak by the way....

Meanwhile Stalin and his successors literally murdered millions more, put them in the Gulag for life, persecuted anybody who did not agree with their ideology. 

No freedom, no escape. Remember the iron curtain and the Berlin Wall?  That was actually a thing. And China and Mao have probably done worse, but they had enough sense to hide behind cheap labor and goods instead of becoming instant enemies they crept it up really slow. 

Remember, we had Nukes for almost 5 years before the Russians. We could have taken them out ( Stalin and his murdering dickface cronies), but chose not to. 

I don't believe we have these bases to prop up evil dictatorships, that makes no sense to me.  We have them to deter potential enemies.

we certainly have propped up evil dictatorships to deter potential enemies