NATO members not paying their share

[oldag]

Actually, we trained, gave funds and weapons to bin Laden (may he rot in hell while being raped by goats) when he was fighting the Russians all while knowing he was going to turn on us as soon as he could.

We did the same thing with Russia during WWII. Paton said that we should have taken them out while we had the men and equipment already there, but we didn't - all while knowing they would turn on us.

Germany is "spending" money because they thought that when they forced us to close our bases that we'd either establish new one in Poland, Czech, etc or just keep dumping greenbacks into their failing economy to keep them propped up. They've gone the political route, 'raised' taxes, and are putting a small amount of money to their military which probably won't be anywhere near enough to get them out of the hole they've dug. They have (for too long) been dependent on the American cannon fodder that was stationed there during the cold war whose only purpose was to slow down (not stop) the Russian Bear. I say that having lived and served there in the 80s/90s and having family (German) still there.

We can't be complete isolationists, but we've created a welfare world where all these countries sit on their asses spending monies on <insert BS> while thinking that if they get into trouble, USA will send them pallets of cash or use our lives to rescue them again....

You don't feed wild animals because they forget how to take care of themselves, the same is true of people and countries. We don't "owe" them anything - but they think we do.

Patton was prescient on the communist threat. Do you think we should have heeded his advice?

I have never argued that NATO should not start stepping up. They should.

And agree on your final point. We cannot be complete isolationists, but we need to choose our battles.

 

[WT_Foxtrot]

We ignored Al Qaeda and what was the result?

With power comes responsibility.

We didn't ignore Al Queda. Quite the opposite, actually, as we created it. If you're referring to 9-11, that was not the first attack on the US by them and it was nothing more than lax immigration policy (which is even worse now) and a complete lack of intelligence primarily driven by the alphabets' refusal to share information across some imaginary line, among other things.....not because we weren't across the globe fighting some useless war in some shithole.

And my question to you would be this: We spent two decades fighting in Afghanistan and/or Iraq. Afghanistan was the longest war in our country's history. They cost some 7K American lives with another 50K or so wounded, many of those lives being altered forever, and an estimated $6-8T that we will be paying for for generations. And what was the result?

Iran is now funding terror groups to run operations out of Iraq and the same medieval lunatics who were running Afghanistan when we went in are running it today with the benefit of billions of dollars in US war machinery since we left with our tail between our legs. Sure, we got bin laden, which I fully supported then and still do. But a manhunt morphed into two decades long wars with unfathomable cost in both lives and dollars.

We're both old enough to remember the Russian war in Afghanistan in the '80s and how the same or similar thing happened to them regardless of the fact that the reasoning for going in was different. Yet we repeated their errors 20 years later with the same results. The whole those who ignore history are doomed to......well, you know.

 

[Havok1]

Regardless of your point, we failed to respond the threat that was very real.

Reality wins.

The reality is that your beliefs are the very reason many threats that we supposedly need to respond to exist. You should have done better research. We also could have killed bin Laden quietly and cheaply years before the first WTC attack, but there’s no money to be made in that. What percentage of our efforts in all of GWOT do you think had anything to do with fighting AQ?

 

[Johnny Diamond]

Patton was prescient on the communist threat. Do you think we should have heeded his advice?

I have never argued that NATO should not start stepping up. They should.

And agree on your final point. We cannot be complete isolationists, but we need to choose our battles.

One must remember that McCarther said the same about China about the same time as Patton said that we should act upon Russia.
Two very brilliant General officers who knew of what they spoke. Both instrumental in winning their respective theaters.

Sent from my SM-G973U using Tapatalk

 

[oldag]

The reality is that your beliefs are the very reason many threats that we supposedly need to respond to exist. You should have done better research. We also could have killed bin Laden quietly and cheaply years before the first WTC attack, but there’s no money to be made in that. What percentage of our efforts in all of GWOT do you think had anything to do with fighting AQ?

Agree we should have taken out bin Laden earlier. But Clinton was content just to lob around a cruise missile or two every time he needed a distraction from a WH scandal.

 

[DoubleDuty]

Of course, isolationism has been a theory since the dawn of time. You said "your," which is what I take issue with.

You broadbrush every situation as the same when they're clearly different just as all globalists do. WWII was far different than Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and even Afghanistan past chasing Al Queda, no? None of those shitholes were going to take over the world or even a continent nor were even a remote threat to the US. And the idiotic "let's send our boys over there to kill them before they kill us here" rhetoric served nothing but spending trillions and getting American soldiers killed for nothing.....absolutely nothing from where I look.

As stated, it's about time we have the countries most affected step up and handle their part and not rely on us, again, $30T large in debt, to defend them. And it's more than ironic that I read a few days ago that all of a sudden, Germany's stepping up their commitment to NATO after Trump's comments. And Trump ain't even in fucking office.

Defend the homeland.....and do so mercilessly and with 100% dedication. But go abroad as a last resort and not as a way to flex your muscles and reward the MIC. We're not the world's police and it's time we recognize it.

Isolationism is not theory, it has been played out in practice.

Germany is stepping up not because of Trump's comments, but because no more aid has made it out of Congress.

Your last paragraph sounds good on the surface, but that is exactly the isolationist attitude that led to WW2. Sometimes we do need to be active in the world. Not for every little thing, I certainly agree. But we need to recognize the dictators who will push until stopped (Putin now, Xi getting started). We need to recognize the fanatical Islamist regimes that want to destroy everyone else (Iran). And admit that force is the only thing that will stop them.

We ignored Al Qaeda and what was the result?

With power comes responsibility.

Exactly we didn't pay attention to the terrorists we armed and trained in Afghanistan to fight the soviets after we were done using them. We didn't pay attention to the Saudi Madrasas. Our intelligence agencies suck, they always have.

 

[TheDan]

Maybe we need to put liens on the countries that still owe dues. Instead of being the world's police, we can be the world's HOA....

That's fucking brilliant.