Do we really care about our American troops?

We have approximately 50,000 American troops--soldiers, men and women--stationed in Germany.

30,000 American troops in Japan.

The same--30,000 American troops--in Korea.


Why?

Does this make any sense?

We defeated Adolf Hitler.

Let's stop fighting "the last big war."

Let's bring them home.

Let's bring them all home.

It's time.

It's beyond time. 

It's the right thing to do.

For them, first, sure, but for us--the country--too.

And on top of all that, Afghanis and Iraqis don't want us in their country, anyway.

What about any of this makes sense, that they're still there?

And while we're at it...

And besides needing to get out of Afghanistan, we need to get the 60,000 American Troops out of Germany, for God's sake and bring them home.

And Japan. We need to get out of Japan (Tokyo and Okinawa, to be specific).

There is a report today, on top of my long-held opinion on this, that "Four teenagers from an American military base in Japan were arrested on charges of attempted murder on Saturday for allegedly toppling a woman riding her motorbike, causing her to suffer a serious head injury."

This makes our being there that much difficult.

An American Soldier was accused of raping a Japanese woman there in 1995 and now this. Sure, there's a lot of time in between these two incidents but not for the Japanese people.

The fact is, the Japanese people feel they don't need us there any longer.

And I couldn't agree more.

This should be a terrific way to cut costs and spending, on top of being a good diplomatic move on our part, toward the respective host country.

The time has come.

Let's bring the American Soldiers from Germany, Japan and, while we're at it, Italy, all home.

It's way overdue. Let's stop trying to fight WWII.


Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/06/world/asia/06japan.html?th&emc=th