In the lead-up to the war in Iraq, President George W. Bush made a promise. “The Iraqi people can be certain of this,” he said. “The United States is committed to helping them build a better future.”

Home. The word is used so casually by most of us. What the word stands for is also easy enough to identify. A house or a room; a village or a city or a country; a couple of people or more; a language or two; food, maybe some landscapes, myths and tales. In other words, everything intimately tied with day to day life; the familiar; the taken-for-granted.

Here’s an odd question: Is it possible that the U.S. military is present in more countries and more places now than at the height of the Cold War?  It’s true that the U.S.