Current Events — HabitableZone

Current Events » in reply to Re: Let them...

What happened a few years ago in the Balkans shows otherwise.
Larry J — (archived)

There were outcries about ethnic cleansing in the Balkans. Terrible things were happening. There were cries that something must be done. However, Europe was too weak to do anything, so we had to send in thousands of our troops to do the job. We're still there because Europe is too weak to police their own neighborhood.

The military brass is still ruled by the civilian leadership and that's how it must always be. When the civilian leadership orders a reduction in force, the military will comply just as they have many times in the past. It's the civilian leadership that determines the size of the military and where the troops are deployed, not the generals and admirals in the Pentagon.

As for me, I'd like to see us phase out of our European stations over the next few years. Bring home the troops and the equipment. Let the Europeans determine if they need to be replaced, and if so, let them replace them with their own personnel and funding.

Yesterday, Germany announced that it was deciding whether we could use bases in their country for operations against Iraq, should it come to that. We have roughly 70,000 personnel still in Germany. Many thousands of those aren't the old armored divisions of the Cold War era but instead are Air Force personnel at bases like Ramstein. When I heard that Germany was questioning whether we could use the bases, it made me wonder why we're still there.

Pulling those 70,000 personnel (and many thousand more military dependents) from Germany would have a significant impact to their economy. I sometimes believe that's the reason we're still there more than any military reason.

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