{"id":26404,"date":"2011-09-06T11:04:34","date_gmt":"2011-09-06T15:04:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=26404"},"modified":"2011-09-06T11:55:20","modified_gmt":"2011-09-06T15:55:20","slug":"finally-common-sense-defense-cuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=26404","title":{"rendered":"Finally, common sense defense cuts"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Global Post <\/a>reports that, with the coming defense cuts come plans to reduce our forces in Europe. Seven decades after World War II and more than two decades after the Cold War, it makes sense;<\/p>\n

Still based in Europe at the moment are four Army \u201cBrigade Combat Teams,\u201d three in Germany and a fourth in Vicenza, Italy. The lighter, more deployable BCTs emerged from a major reform of the army\u2019s force structure in the past decade and number about 3,500-strong, compared to the 10,000-12,000 soldier divisions they replaced. One of those four \u2014 likely one of the Germany-based BCTs, will be withdrawn in 2012. <\/p>\n

The result will be an enormous change from the days when encountering American soldiers on leave or liberty in Europe was routine. Cold War U.S. troop strength in Europe, which peaked in 1962 at nearly 277,000 soldiers, remained well over 200,000 until the early 1990s. Under current plans, resisted by a military leadership increasingly resigned to the deep cuts coming in the years ahead, will cut European based troops from 42,000 today to 37,000 by 2015. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I loved the nine years I spent in Germany, but the mission has pretty much ended and it’s about time that the Defense Department and the government in general, started looking other places than personnel costs for their cuts. <\/p>\n

The majority of Germans didn’t appreciate the job we were doing there even when there was a visible scar across Europe during the Cold War, so it’s time to leave them to their own devices.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Global Post reports that, with the coming defense cuts come plans to reduce our forces … Finally, common sense defense cuts<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-military-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26404"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26404\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}