Tuesday, August 17, 2004

Bring the Boys Back Home: Rumsfeld has been pursuing a rearrangement of the U.S. military to make it more agile to confront immediate hotspots. So Bush is putting that plan into action by removing troops from overseas bases in Europe and Asia and stationing them here in the U.S.

Am I missing something?

Bush is right that the current military arrangement is a remnant of the Cold War. But to fight the War on Terrorism, we need more troops overseas, not fewer. With more troops stateside, they'll have to travel half way across the world if a hotspot flares up.

Instead of permanent bases in Germany, we need to keep a base in Iraq and another in Afghanistan. The War on Terrorism won't always involve invasion and liberation of countries. But we need to have troops ready to move out at a moment's notice, and they can't do that if they're here.