Allowing Europe to have free healthcare and other social benefits denied to our citizens because we provide their defense is beyond stupid and is ending no matter what anyone thinks.
Paying for the defense of Europe. Here’s the math. The UK plus EU’s GDP is $22T. Russia’s is $2T. If the EU spent 3% of GDP on defense that would total $660B. If Russia tried to match that effort it would take fully a third of their output. Obviously impossible. Europe can easily defend itself.
The assurance that Jelensky was seeking in the infamous White House meeting was that we would send in our troops if Putin breached any agreement aimed at ending the war. No American president including Trump and Biden would or could give him that assurance because it’s a de facto NATO membership. We have no idea if the thug Putin will stick to any agreement he makes (and he is not to be trusted) so we can’t commit to an armed response by our troops due to his perfidy. We can only say that if it does happen we will continue to supply weapons and ammunition to Ukraine.
Many people including the most powerful man in the world are advising the Ukrainians to acknowledge that they will never regain the Russian speaking territory that they have lost and that their only hope for survival as a people is to cede that land to a more powerful adversary. I happen to agree with that advice and have thought it was prudent since the outbreak of the war. Many countries have given up land when they lost wars and have continued to survive and even prosper. Germany and Japan being two more recent examples and yes, they were the aggressors, unlike Ukraine.
It is a very difficult time for our nation where most now have no experience of military service and no desire that their children or grandchildren ever have that experience and yet we are forced to struggle with our relationship to an ongoing European war. I have nothing but contempt for those who urge us to support a war with no intention to actually ever have to personally suffer from the consequences of their urging. During the Vietnam war we called those individuals chicken hawks and they are once again flapping their wings and their beaks.
By the time I finished reading your comment I was on my feet yelling it. My family might take out a mental inquest on me, but I DON'T CARE! Amen to that! My first clear thought on the White House meeting was that. They want us to die alongside of them.
So, the part about the defense spending, what is it they want out of us? What do we have that they don't have?
Oh, and about the chicken hawks, did you see the Free Press debate "Should America police the world?" With Matt Taibbi and Lee Fang vs Brett Stephens and Jaime Kirchick. It was a master in making the chicken hawks look like dope. Lee Fang asks Bret Stephens at one point, "Are you enlisted?" He says, "I-I-I'm too old" and he's like, "You weren't when you were calling for the invasion of Iraq. And there's people your age being conscripted in Ukraine. The war you are calling for." I'm a little off, Matt asked the question and Lee chimed in and it was to Kirchick, not Stephens. I realized I have an almost finished article I wrote when the debate came out, I'll try to finish it and get it out, but that debate is worth watching, even if you have skip past Brett Stupins.
Watched and well worth it. I served as a sergeant in a MI unit during the Vietnam War. Thank god we never left the states. So many lives lost for nothing. My unfinished bucket list still calls for me to go to Texas and piss on LBJ’s grave.
Right. What a fucking demon. It often blows my mind, the hubris of going to another country, invading someone else's culture, forcing our culture on them by the barrel of a gun, and then looking around like, "what's their problem?"
Donald Trump gets a new label:
CINO Christian in name only.
Allowing Europe to have free healthcare and other social benefits denied to our citizens because we provide their defense is beyond stupid and is ending no matter what anyone thinks.
Paying for the defense of Europe. Here’s the math. The UK plus EU’s GDP is $22T. Russia’s is $2T. If the EU spent 3% of GDP on defense that would total $660B. If Russia tried to match that effort it would take fully a third of their output. Obviously impossible. Europe can easily defend itself.
The assurance that Jelensky was seeking in the infamous White House meeting was that we would send in our troops if Putin breached any agreement aimed at ending the war. No American president including Trump and Biden would or could give him that assurance because it’s a de facto NATO membership. We have no idea if the thug Putin will stick to any agreement he makes (and he is not to be trusted) so we can’t commit to an armed response by our troops due to his perfidy. We can only say that if it does happen we will continue to supply weapons and ammunition to Ukraine.
Many people including the most powerful man in the world are advising the Ukrainians to acknowledge that they will never regain the Russian speaking territory that they have lost and that their only hope for survival as a people is to cede that land to a more powerful adversary. I happen to agree with that advice and have thought it was prudent since the outbreak of the war. Many countries have given up land when they lost wars and have continued to survive and even prosper. Germany and Japan being two more recent examples and yes, they were the aggressors, unlike Ukraine.
It is a very difficult time for our nation where most now have no experience of military service and no desire that their children or grandchildren ever have that experience and yet we are forced to struggle with our relationship to an ongoing European war. I have nothing but contempt for those who urge us to support a war with no intention to actually ever have to personally suffer from the consequences of their urging. During the Vietnam war we called those individuals chicken hawks and they are once again flapping their wings and their beaks.
By the time I finished reading your comment I was on my feet yelling it. My family might take out a mental inquest on me, but I DON'T CARE! Amen to that! My first clear thought on the White House meeting was that. They want us to die alongside of them.
So, the part about the defense spending, what is it they want out of us? What do we have that they don't have?
Oh, and about the chicken hawks, did you see the Free Press debate "Should America police the world?" With Matt Taibbi and Lee Fang vs Brett Stephens and Jaime Kirchick. It was a master in making the chicken hawks look like dope. Lee Fang asks Bret Stephens at one point, "Are you enlisted?" He says, "I-I-I'm too old" and he's like, "You weren't when you were calling for the invasion of Iraq. And there's people your age being conscripted in Ukraine. The war you are calling for." I'm a little off, Matt asked the question and Lee chimed in and it was to Kirchick, not Stephens. I realized I have an almost finished article I wrote when the debate came out, I'll try to finish it and get it out, but that debate is worth watching, even if you have skip past Brett Stupins.
https://youtu.be/KHJPg_6kWXg?si=p47L3z9tXcuNEOhg
Watched and well worth it. I served as a sergeant in a MI unit during the Vietnam War. Thank god we never left the states. So many lives lost for nothing. My unfinished bucket list still calls for me to go to Texas and piss on LBJ’s grave.
Shew! LBJ was a motherfucker, wasn’t he? You think he might’ve been involved in the JFK thing? You were around back then, how’d it look to you?
No, but he killed thousands of young men for no good purpose. Our washer, dryer and fridge were all made in Vietnam. I hold no grudges against them.
Right. What a fucking demon. It often blows my mind, the hubris of going to another country, invading someone else's culture, forcing our culture on them by the barrel of a gun, and then looking around like, "what's their problem?"