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On September 11, 1944, a patrol led by Staff Sergeant Warner L. Holzinger of Troop B, 85th Reconnaissance Squadron, 5th Armored Division, crossed the Our River from Luxembourg into Germany. Those five soldiers were the vanguard of a mighty Allied force that would within eight months conquer the Third Reich, thereby ending World War II in Europe. U.S. troops have been on German soil ever since, first as forces of occupation and since 1949 as part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Their presence advances American national security objectives: ensuring the stability of Europe, keeping European allies out of the Russian orbit, and providing bases from which U.S. forces can deploy to the Middle East, as they have done twice since the end of the Cold War. There is no logical strategic or economic rationale for deploying them elsewhere, either within Europe or withdrawing them back to the United States. In announcing the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Germany, U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper remarked that the new force posture would enhance U.S. deterrence against Russia by providing more flexibility to rotate forces into Poland and the Baltic and Black Sea regions. There is no doubt that NATO’s center of gravity has shifted eastward with the accession of Poland, the Baltic States, and other central and Eastern European nations. Rotating more U.S. forces into the Baltic and Black Sea regions to deter Russian adventurism makes sense. What is inexplicable is how moving U.S. brigades from Germany back to the United States furthers this goal. Units based in Germany can use the excellent European rail system to deploy east; units based in the United States have to fly their personnel across the Atlantic Ocean to meet their equipment in Europe, a much more difficult proposition. Transportation nodes in Germany such as Bremerhaven and Ramstein Air Base—the largest U.S. air base outside the United States—also serve as major logistical hubs; they cannot easily be replicated elsewhere.
Is It Wise To Pull Out And Redeploy 12,000 U.S. Troops From Germany?
President Trump’s decision to return the U.S 2nd Cavalry Regiment currently stationed in Germany to American soil (6,500 troops), as well as to redeploy mostly Air Force units from Germany to Italy and command headquarters to Belgium and Poland (another 5,600), will have mostly modest positive military consequences and has already benefited America diplomatically. The military consequences are modest because U.S forces in Europe have long since ceased to be potential combatants. The diplomatic ones flow from the fact that NATO Europe is a growing political problem for America, that Germany is the negativity’s heart, and that removing some troops is probably the gentlest way in which the U.S. may begin to alleviate that problem.
America—A European Power No More? Shifting Tectonics, Changing Interests, And The Shrinking Size Of U.S. Troops In Europe
The Trump drawdown of U.S. troops in Europe is not the end of the alliance, but part of a familiar story. America’s military presence has been contested from Week 1—make that February 4–11, 1945. At Yalta, Franklin D. Roosevelt assured Joseph Stalin that the United States would soon depart from Europe. Its troops—three million at the peak—would all be gone in two years. Nor would the U.S. assume the burden of “reconstituting France, Italy and the Balkans...It is definitely a British task.” At the end of WWII, it was back to the future of 1919. Europe would again be on its own.
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Is It Wise To Pull Out And Redeploy 12,000 U.S. Troops From Germany?
President Trump’s decision to return the U.S 2nd Cavalry Regiment currently stationed in Germany to American soil (6,500 troops), as well as to redeploy mostly Air Force units from Germany to Italy and command headquarters to Belgium and Poland (another 5,600), will have mostly modest positive military consequences and has already benefited America diplomatically. The military consequences are modest because U.S forces in Europe have long since ceased to be potential combatants. The diplomatic ones flow from the fact that NATO Europe is a growing political problem for America, that Germany is the negativity’s heart, and that removing some troops is probably the gentlest way in which the U.S. may begin to alleviate that problem.
America—A European Power No More? Shifting Tectonics, Changing Interests, And The Shrinking Size Of U.S. Troops In Europe
The Trump drawdown of U.S. troops in Europe is not the end of the alliance, but part of a familiar story. America’s military presence has been contested from Week 1—make that February 4–11, 1945. At Yalta, Franklin D. Roosevelt assured Joseph Stalin that the United States would soon depart from Europe. Its troops—three million at the peak—would all be gone in two years. Nor would the U.S. assume the burden of “reconstituting France, Italy and the Balkans...It is definitely a British task.” At the end of WWII, it was back to the future of 1919. Europe would again be on its own.
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from HumanProgress.org
Education Website
Our eleventh Center of Progress is 9th century CE Baghdad, during the Abbasid caliphate at the beginning of the so-called Islamic Golden Age. Baghdad was quickly growing into the world's largest city and was a major learning center that saw breakthroughs in mathematics and, most notably, astronomy. As the intellectual capital of the Muslim world, which stretched from Spain to China, Baghdad attracted scholars from many different locations. While the predominant faith was Islam, the city became a melting pot of many other religions and cultures. For a time, Baghdad had a relatively open and tolerant society that allowed the city to flourish. The House of Wisdom was a library established in Abbasid-era Baghdad that soon grew into one of history's greatest intellectual centers. It was a hub of translation, philosophical exchange, and innovation.
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from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington
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America’s economic rebound is about to get a lot tougher after an initial series of gains from the depths of the pandemic. Applications for regular state unemployment benefits continue to number more than 800,000 each week and chances in Congress diminished for additional support for the jobless and businesses on Thursday. What’s more, funding for the temporary supplemental jobless benefit payments authorized by President Donald Trump in early August is running out.
The coronavirus pandemic has taken a harsh toll on the mental health of young Americans, according to a new poll that finds adults under 35 especially likely to report negative feelings or experience physical or emotional symptoms associated with stress and anxiety. A majority of Americans ages 18 through 34 – 56% – say they have at least sometimes felt isolated in the past month, compared with about 4 in 10 older Americans, according to the latest COVID Response Tracking Study conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago. Twenty-five percent of young adults rate their mental health as fair or poor, compared with 13% of older adults, while 56% of older adults say their mental health is excellent or very good, compared with just 39% of young adults.
In every state, the AP and Chalkbeat surveyed the largest school districts in each of four categories set by the National Center for Education Statistics: urban, suburban, town and rural. Survey responses from 677 school districts covering 13 million students found that most students will begin the school year online. That’s the case for the vast majority of the nation’s biggest districts, with the notable exception of New York City. But the survey shows that race is a strong predictor of which public schools are offering in-person instruction and which aren’t. The higher a district’s share of white students, the more likely it is to offer in-person instruction – a pattern that generally holds across cities, towns, suburbs and rural areas. Across the surveyed districts, 79% of Hispanic students, 75% of Black students, and 51% of white students won’t have the option of in-person learning.
Measures to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus brought an extra bonus to Seattle and King County: Reduced levels of respiratory infections of all types. A new analysis of results from the Seattle Coronavirus Assessment Network (SCAN) finds that the respiratory viruses responsible for everything from common colds to flu were much less prevalent this year than in 2019. “The undeniable contrast is almost certainly due to the COVID-19 control efforts,” says a blog post by researchers Gregory Hart and Mike Famulare of the Institute for Disease Modeling.
If political campaigns can be considered a Rorschach test on the boundaries of rhetoric, gubernatorial candidate Loren Culp offered a verbal “ink blot” last week that will almost certainly be viewed differently by his supporters than by Gov. Jay Inslee’s. Talking on Facebook Live, which is often the Republic police chief’s favored medium, Culp offered up a favorite quote on one of his favorite topics, limited government bounded by the Constitution: “Government is like fire. If it’s contained within your fireplace, then it can heat your home, provide comfort for your family … but if it gets outside the boundaries of your fireplace, it can consume your home, it can consume you, it can kill you and take everything you have.”
An attorney working for Stevens County Prosecutor Tim Rasmussen has roundly rejected a request to grant the county commissioners temporary immunity from gross misdemeanor charges, while the parties continue to dispute whether the commissioners can hold office. Rasmussen and his specially appointed deputy prosecutor, George Ahrend, contend the commissioners – Wes McCart, Steve Parker and Don Dashiell – lost their elected positions last month when a judge ruled against them and their bonding agencies, saying they had misspent more than $130,000 in taxpayer funds earmarked for homelessness assistance.
Firefighting crews working across the eastern portions of Washington and North Idaho continued battling invading smoke and rising temperatures Friday as they sought to extinguish blazes that have burned hundreds of thousands of acres since Monday. As of Friday morning, the state had 14 active large fires with 626,982 acres burned, Gov. Jay Inslee announced in a news conference Friday afternoon. About 5,000 people across the state have evacuated their homes. The Cold Springs fire near Omak has burned nearly 188,000 acres since igniting Sunday evening. The cause of the fire, which resulted in the death of a 1-year-old and sent his parents to the hospital with severe burns, remains under investigation. New mapping conducted in the past 24 hours has shown the Pearl Hill fire, which started after the Cold Springs fire jumped the Columbia River and burned southern portions of Douglas County near Bridgeport, is substantially larger than previously believed. The fire is believed to have burned nearly 220,000 acres of brush and tall grass in areas east of Bridgeport and Mansfield.
The possibility of an unresolved presidential election this fall giving way to a winter of uncertainty, chaos or even political violence has sent many Americans scurrying to the history books in search of a precedent. Never before has an incumbent president sought to hold onto power despite an apparent loss in his bid for reelection, as President Donald Trump has indicated he might. Yet there have on occasion been lingering doubts long after Election Day about who the winner actually was. Most recently, the 2000 election wasn’t resolved until mid-December, when five Republican-appointed justices on the Supreme Court put a stop to the recount of votes in Florida, thus handing the election to George W. Bush. But there is a more frightening example of a contested election: 1876. This deadlock came remarkably close to plunging the United States into another civil war, barely more than a decade after the close of the first one. It suggests that today we need not only fear potential violence but should also worry about what policies and principles even well-meaning political leaders might be willing to compromise on to avert it.
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