Posted on 09/26/2006 6:32:12 PM PDT by Leifur
The United States and Iceland have agreed final details of how the U.S. Navy will end more than half a century during which U.S. forces constituted the only military presence on the island nation, the State Department said Tuesday. A package of agreements, to be signed over the next few weeks, conclude negotiations that began March 15 with the U.S. announcement that it would abandon the U.S. Naval Air Station at Keflavik by the end of September. The air station itself was disestablished in a ceremony last week. U.S. forces have been at Keflavik since 1951, early in the Cold War, under a U.S.-Icelandic defense agreement that formalized an arrangement dating from 1941. The Navy took over from the Air Force in 1961 and has been there since. "In the height of the Cold War, this was the place to be to protect against Soviet submarines. And we were successful and the (Keflavik) team had a great deal to do with that," Rear Adm. Noel Preston, the Navy's European region commander, said in the Sept. 11 disestablishment ceremony. "Now the world has changed, and we are facing a war on terrorism. We are changing how we plan and prepare for this war. But what will not change is our friendship and partnership with Iceland." Iceland has no military force, but in a civilian capacity it participates in international peacekeeping missions. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the agreements would not affect the U.S. commitment to defend Iceland under the defense treaty and as a NATO ally. "These agreements will establish a framework for future bilateral cooperation in the defense of Iceland and for our overall security relationship with this NATO ally," McCormack said.
(Excerpt) Read more at iht.com ...
During its lifetime, the Keflavik operations included submarine patrols using P-3 Orion sub hunters until 2004. Army National Guard and Marine units used nearby lava fields for training exercises. U.S. Air Force F-15 fighters used its facilities. It had helicopters and four F-15s until its disestablishment. At its height, the naval air station had almost 5,000 American military people, civilian contractors and family members. Just over 100 officers and sailors remained when it was disestablished. U.S. officials at the naval station said contracts of around 600 Icelandic employees of the base in March would be honored through this month.
My comment begins:
This agreement is sadly not very favorible to us Icelanders, and is thus giving the opposition increased ammunition in its criticism of the centre right government that has been a staunch ally of the US. The whole nation is learning how "good" it is to be friend of the US.
What they criticise to most is the fact that the US is not going to clean up the pollution that is left on the defence area.
As the defence part is not completely revealed, but seems very vagualy mentioned, it seems nobody can criticise that, except by pointing out that a defence agreement without any defences is in fact pointless. Unless there are elements we don´t know about, we only knows it is supposed to depend on mobile forces. This has sadly given strength to immature voices saying that our best defences should be not having any, and not bee in NATO, thus not be a target.
The various institutions and private companies have shown very much interests in the base area, and it is quite clear that the loss of revenues because of the base closure will very soon be offset by new opportunities this area will provide.
Most of the people that lost their jobs have allready gotten another work, even though about one third of them is getting close to retirement, the employment situation here in Iceland is very good, we in fact need more people, and better roads have made the base area and the fast growing capital area a single work market.
I would have liked the US not to give the left a moral and historical victory by how they handled this whole issue, the right in Iceland has allways stood with the US, and we have been betrayed, I must say bluntly.
Tomkow this article for youuu
Finally there is some conclusion to the discussions. It seems though not very favorible to Iceland, except for the opportunities the buildings and area will provide to the various private operators and institutions dying to get their hands on it.
There are dozens of other countries we ought to be doing the same thing with.
Unfortunate.
If the firearms laws are the same in Iceland as they are elsewhere in Scandinavia, a few hundred mujaheddin (disguised as tourists and asylum-seekers, of course) could wreak havoc on this beautiful little nation.
I agree Germany and South Korea come to mind.
The Icelandic government really blew this one. When the US first indicated we would close down our facility at Keflavik several years ago, Iceland reacted with a show of moral outrage, insisting it was America's "duty" as a NATO ally to maintain forces in Iceland. After several years of this, Iceland finally offered to pay for maintaining the US force -- but by then it was too late, and the US said it was withdrawing regardless. If Iceland had offered to pay for the US presence in the beginning, there's a decent chance DOD would have agreed.
This little episode illustrates that timing and a well thought-out negotiation strategy are important.
Yebb, that is the danger. They would not need to use planes to attack us, like some politicians have been farting about, they would only need group of determined men, and a container of some AK-47 and grenades and they could kill thousands, before our small police SWAT team (the Viking force) could stop them.
And in fact they could immobilise those 20 or so men, and we would be totally defenceless for the whole day or what it will take for the US to honor its defence agreement by sending any defence capabilities.
Of course we must increase our own security apparatus, but it is so much harder to make it politically possible now when the loony left has won the moral victory of seeing the US base go when we are not longer needed like they allways said the US would do. They were right, and we on the right were wrong, the US was only here for their own gain, not as our friends defending us.
Time to wean yourself off the teat little boy.
Well if you can't defend your country...then why are you considered a country? Seems to me you are just a aggregate of shops and places of employment......you listening Canada?
For 65 years the United States has borne the brunt of defending you and the rest of the free world. We have funded those many hundreds of base-related jobs with our taxpayer dollars. You've enjoyed having no military expenditures, and no uniforms on your young men because some other country bought that for you. Your wealth has been saved so as to maximize your lifestyle, while others did the heavy lifting.
In one breath you complain that the base is devastated by pollution... but apparently not enough to deter the large numbers of business persons interested in utilizing the base properties.
It often seems that the entire world is looking up it's own rectum, wondering why more free stuff is not coming their way.
If your leftists consider that they have won a "moral victory" by somehow immaterially opposing those men who handed the world 6 decades of freedom from the Stalins, the Krushevs, and the Chavez's of the world, you have far worse problems than you imagine.
As for your retreating from NATO... many of us in the States have been given a cold dose of reality, recently, about the worth of NATO. This is an organization predicated on the basis that the U.S. will shed blood and treasure to defend anyone else who is attacked or threatened... but when we face animals who murder for headlines, it seems that those same countries want no part of "outdated treaty agreements".
It is now very trendy to be anti-American. Enjoy yourselves, because we have longer memories than you think.
Ahhh! The Blue Lagoon!
The best reason to return to Iceland.
Maybe you are right, but we could of course never be able to make it politically possible to pay the US to be here. But we did offer, though it was propably allready to late, to gradually take over many of the functions of the base, beginning with the helicopter squad.
If that would have been done, Iceland would have had to learn how do defend itself, with expertise help from the US force that did it for this past half century, and the left would never have been able to have any credibility saying we should be defenceless. Now those that have been championing for Icelanders to take more responsible themselves are the ones beeing ridiculed, for paranoia and so on.
We never insisted it was your duty as a NATO ally to defend us, but because of the bilateral defence agreement between the US and Iceland. People just could not beliewe the US would leave us standing alone so abruptly, after all the infighting over the years here in Iceland because of the military presence.
The nation was split in two, but finally the majority had accepted the presence as a neccasery and a good thing. Then suddenly the US was saying to the contrary that they were leaving.
The right in Iceland would have been the dominant force in Icelandic politics instead of the left during these past 50 years, if it had not taken on itself the moral duty of standing shoulder to shoulder with other democratic allies in the cold war.
They wouldn't have to be disguised as anything. They could sail up in one of those ships Al Qaida is supposed to have, there would be no one to oppose the invasion, save a few police, and maybe a fisheries patrol boat, if they stupidly came in through the fishing areas.
The reason we are leaving Iceland is two fold. First, supposed the Bear is no longer a threat (Hah!) Secondly , we have commitment elsewhere. Neither the President nor the Congress is willing to increase our military, in size and in budget, to properly fight the war on the Islamofacists. Thus the money has to come from somewhere, and a no longer needed (supposedly) base in Iceland seems a good candidate for closure and cost savings.
But take heart Icelanders, in almost all of the recent (last 10-15 years) of base closings in the US, the local community was better off economically afterwords than before, as all that prime real estate was converted to commercial use.
We are your friends - it would be an unfriendly act to maintain our military presence when your government was, not in so many words, asking us to leave.
I'm sorry you have such hard feelings. Us soldiers are still willing to fight and die to honor their commitment to the good people of Iceland.
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