BERLIN - The U.S. Army will pull out of 13 bases in southern Germany as part of its repositioning of American forces around the world, its European headquarters said Friday.

Eleven bases in and around the Bavarian city of Wuerzburg will be handed over to the German government by September 2007, the Army's European headquarters in Heidelberg said. Two more bases near Wuerzburg will close and be handed over in subsequent years.

The Defense Department said the changes will affect about 6,100 soldiers and 11,000 family members as well as about 1,000 Army civilian employees and 1,000 civilians employed locally.

While facilities like the huge Ramstein Air Base, a hub for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, are being retained, Washington is bringing many units home and opening smaller, more flexible bases abroad to respond to new threats such as international terrorism.

The new bases will host U.S.-based troops rotating through for shorter periods of time, without the schools and family housing that went with Cold War-era bases.

I'm no military expert, but even to a layperson this re-deployment makes sense.

One of the reasons the war on terrorism in Iraq has put such a strain on our military is because we have our troops and equipment spread out around the globe as though we were still facing the threats we faced in the Cold War era. The reality is that those threats have faded and new threats have taken their place.

A lot of people in this country have worried about the recruiting short falls our military has faced. Some have taken to talking about the draft and how it might need to be re-instated to provide troops for the war. I've often wondered why re-deployment has been talked about more as a solution for this problem. It may well be that we have plenty of troops to fight the war on terrorism if we just position them in places where they can be useful to the current tasks our military is engaged in instead of the tasks of the past.