Commentary The parts of the United States called American territories are not well understood anymore. Although a premier component of American superiority in the 20th century, in the age of Howard Zinn’s textbooks in the public school system, our territories are ignored or simply used as cudgels in hyperbolic attacks against the rare historical experiment of a constitutional republic called the United States. Of the five populated territories, Puerto Rico is the largest by land mass size and population (roughly 3.3 million). The Department of Defense (DOD) gunnery and bombing range called Vieques Island became a cause célèbre for left-leaning personalities such as Al Sharpton in the late 1990s. With the peace dividend looming over DOD budgets in the later years of the Clinton administration and the raging theater and feigned outrage by non-Puerto Ricans, the DOD decision was made to shut down and depart—with dire strategic consequences for U.S. …