Written by: Beck
It has been a fair question for some time as to precisely what the purpose of the hundreds of thousands of US soldiers and support personnel are still doing in Germany & other European bases. Their station there made sense during the cold war, but now they would seem to be guarding against an invasion from Poland, which, while the Irony factor would be record setting, isn't exactly likely to happen.
In the past, it would have been a diplomatic mess to realign those troops, since they represent a sizable chunk of the German economy. Now that Germany (and much of the rest of Europe) has made it plain that they want little to do with us militarily, the President finally has the diplomatic wiggle room to return the favor.
The timing couldn't be better, what with our overstretched military commitments in Central Asia.
Bush said about 60,000 to 70,000 uniformed personnel would move from overseas to posts in the United States over the next decade. The move would also involve about 100,000 family members and civilian employees, Bush said.
[...] Bush said it makes no sense to continue an armed posture that was forged during the cold war, when the Soviet Union represented the nation's biggest threat. Terrorism, he said, is now the chief threat.
"The world has changed a great deal and our posture must change with it," Bush said.
It's about time.