GeorgeWBush.com :: Agenda for America – Chapter 4
American Forces Overseas Will Be Restructured to Use Existing Forces More Effectively and More Efficiently Support Servicemen, Servicewomen, and Their Families – After three years of extensive review and consultation with Congress and our allies around the world, President Bush has begun the most comprehensive restructuring of the U.S. military presence overseas since the end of the Korean War. His new initiative will bring home many Cold War-era forces while deploying more flexible and rapidly deployable capabilities in strategic locations around the world.
As announced this is already starting. 59 years after the defeat of Germany, we have apparently “won the peace” as the Demoncats like to say and tens of thousands of troops are finally being redeployed, many to bases at home in the United States where they can be with their families.
It hasn’t been mentioned much but there are actually economic and jobs consequences to having more of our defense dollars spent paying troops at home rather than overseas. I’d expect several thousand new retail and service jobs in the areas of the military bases that get the redeployed troops and with Europe’s protectionism it probably means at least a bit more money flowing to American manufacturers. We’ve been “exporting jobs” to Germany and Japan in the form of military spending since the end of WWII. Both in the form of paying for their defense so our industry is taxed instead of theirs and in the form of American GIs spending their paychecks in those countries instead of at home, American defense policy has been a big economic subsidy to our erstwhile enemies.