Portugal Rattled As U.S. Military Pares Back -- Wall Street Journal
Plan to Reduce Airbase's Staff Threatens Financial Troubles for Remote Island's Residents, Deals Symbolic Blow to Lisbon.
PRAIA DA VITÓRIA, Portugal—When euro-zone countries were slashing budgets last year, U.S. President Barack Obama urged them to tackle their currency crisis by focusing more on growth. But it is Mr. Obama's own belt-tightening plan for the Pentagon that is about to put a Portuguese community in the middle of the Atlantic deeper into economic trouble.
By summer of next year, most of the 1,380 Americans living in Praia da Vitória, on an island in the Azores, will head home as part of a plan to cut U.S. expenses there by $35 million a year. Left behind will be 160 U.S. Air Force personnel, a reduced Portuguese support staff and hundreds of unemployed in a town of 22,000 that for more than six decades has helped maintain U.S. operations and homes at Lajes Field.
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My Comment: The Portuguese must realize that the Americans could not stay there forever .... and for the U.S. .... the time to leave is now.
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