I loved the area, some of the best years of my life were spent there.

Neither of us would recognize Graf anymore. They were in the middle of a roughly $8 billion base expansion when I was there. Most of the smaller bases around Germany were being shuddered and the remaining ground forces were to be stationed mostly at Hohenfels and Vilseck/Graf. They completed building the largest PX in USAER on Graf, a huge gym and were finishing up building countless barracks buildings as I was getting out of the Army. When I first went to Germany in 2003, 1 ID and 1 AD were there. When I left in 2007, they were talking about there only being 2 brigades left in Germany.

Much of the same bravado was in the army when I was in too. I heard over and over again that we should “just turn the Middle East into a glass parking lot”. I found that much of that same mindset was prevalent in civilians back in the states too. How were we supposed to build successful modern democracies in Iraq and Afghanistan when a large portion of our society believes that?

Anyways….