Few people probably follow breaking news from Iceland, but my husband and I pay close attention because we have an exchange daughter, Elin, who lives there. The Bee recently ran this short brief: "REYKJAVIK, Iceland -- The United States, which has long provided Iceland with its only military force, has decided to withdraw most of its service members and all of its fighter jets and helicopters from the country later this year, the U.S. ambassador said Thursday. Iceland's government, which had recently offered to pay some of the cost of its defense to try to keep U.S. forces here, said it regretted the decision. But Washington also said it would continue to honor its 1951 agreement with Iceland requiring the United States, under the auspices of NATO, to provide this country's defense."

Our Icelandic daughter, Elin, an exchange student at Bullard two years ago, reacted this way: "I think Icelanders don´t like the decision about taking the army away. It´s helping us so much in rescuing people. The Icelandic rescue unit only has two helicopters to rescue people and they have to spend a lot of money to buy more if the army goes away. I don´t like the fact that no army is here. We are so few and it will be so easy to take over Iceland if the U.S. army isn´t here. And I think that many terrorists could think of taking Iceland cause of its good location."

International politics is almost always personal for us because of our extended international family. We got news yesterday that Elin's coming back to Fresno for a visit in May, so we can resume our long and passionate talks about U.S. and Icelandic politics very soon. We cannot wait.