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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Exactly. Trump still doesn't understand how NATO funding actually works. He wants the European states to pay up, not to go "okay, then we will built our own defence".
And those Republicans who do understand how it works are often motivated by their donors in the military industrial complex. When they bang on about NATO countries spending more, the idea is to get more weapon contracts for US companies.
What those donors don't want is the European states organising themselves independent from the US, because for one, this will result in a more effective defence spending and two, if the European countries make an effort to be as independent as possible from the US, they will try to use local weapon producers as much as possible.
Trump doesn't want a European military. He wants a weak Europe that he can extort for continued American military support. He views NATO as a protection racket. A European military is the exact opposite of that.
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Oof, beat me to the punch.
Edited by CrimsonZephyr on Nov 13th 2018 at 10:28:59 AM
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."CNN sues Trump for his barring of Jim Acosta
. Give him hell.
On a side note: This whole "France should be thankful" narrative is getting really, really old.
Just for the record: The ONE reason why the Commonwealth (Commonwealth, not just British) army wasn't defeated for good at Dunkirk was because French troops stalled the Germans long enough to allow them retreat. The US then spend the majority of the war sitting on their hands, until the attack on Pearl Harbor gave them a reason to get more involved. They didn't care one bit about France, what they mostly cared about was the notion that Russia might take over half of Europe and turn it into a communistic state.
The US and the UK REALLY need to get over the narrative they have spun around WWII. It's a fairy tale.
True. But I don't intend to built a new mythos around mine. I just want to poke some holes in the existing one in the hope that some people take a cleared view on the matter. Mostly because I think that this particular narrative was part of what carried Trump into office and, to an even larger degree, caused Brexit.
The problem we have in the UK is this narrative of "We held them off" - conveniently ignoring we were under siege. Operation Sea Lion could have crippled us and we would have fallen swiftly if the Germans had followed through - but they ran into that whole "invading an island is HARD" issue.
And, like the US, we have this myth that we have "never been invaded", which conveniently glosses over our historic reality of that we were REPEATEDLY invaded or had our power structures managed by people from overseas or who didn't see themselves as "British".
Problem is, everything is reductive and soundbites appeal to an audience more.
This is completely false, Operation Sea Lion had no chance of working and was just Nazi delusion. It was only slightly more plausible than a German invasion of the continental United States, i.e not at all.
Furthermore to say that they could've easily won if it hadn't been so hard may technically be true but kind of hilariously misses the point. By definition, if it was hard for them then you did hold them off.
Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Nov 13th 2018 at 11:07:45 AM
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji YangFair point - I'm not a WW 2 scholar, so stand corrected. So we held them off by dint of Nazi leadership not following through?
Until D-Day an amphibious Op of that nature was inconceivable, I imagine, and the Germans didn't have sufficient amphibious transports.
it has festered into a superiority complex - we survived thanks to a combo of the RAF (And the Free French, Polish and other pilots in there) AND the relief convoys from the USA.
The USA did, arguably, tip the balance. Who knows what could've happened if they hadn't dived in. But it has led to an uglier claim. And a fetishisation of the wars (As seen in our own Remembrance day debates and some of the.... attitudes towards the poppy)
And it's that the in turn leads to a sneering attitude towards the continent.
From the developing What the Fuck Just Happened Today feed:
A federal judge has delayed certification of the Georgia election results over concerns about the state's voter registration system and the handling of provisional ballots. The decision formally affects every state and federal election in Georgia, but it was felt most prominently in the race for governor, where Stacy Abrams remains with 21,000 votes of forcing a runoff election against Brian Kemp. (New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/12/us/georgia-governor-election.html
Maryland will ask a federal judge for an order declaring that Rod Rosenstein is the acting attorney general instead of Trump-appointee and former chief of staff for Jeff Sessions, Matthew Whitaker. If the judge issues the order, Whitaker will not be able to serve as acting attorney general. The Justice Department would appeal any such order immediately. Maryland is arguing that Whitaker's selection violated federal law and exceeded the appointment authority outlined in the Constitution. (NBC News)
It was a concern of FDR, but his hands were tied as far as US non-interventionism was concerned. The only reason he was able to sell full-on armed conflict to the public was because some drug-addled Austrian corporal decided that declaring war on one of the greatest industrial powers in the world just wasn't quite enough, and he needed to declare war on the two greatest industrial powers in the world at the same time.
The US would probably still have been involved in the Pacific (and lest we forget the Japanese atrocities going on in China, this was still very much an admirable goal), but an armed intervention in Germany would still be hard to sell to the public. It might've just stuck to Lend-Lease to the Soviets, if not for aforementioned idiot corporal.
That said, the Normandy landings were primarily undertaken because of two foreign policy goals: giving the Allies a seat at the postwar table having fought an actual land campaign against the Germans, and preventing the Soviet Union from completely overrunning Europe and setting up the same kinds of puppet states they'd eventually set up in Poland, Hungary and the soon-to-be German Democratic Republic.
The US intervening in World War 2 changed the outcome from 'probable Axis defeat' to 'certain Axis defeat,' but the national narrative the US has built around the war, largely to invite public support for its armed forces and the imperialist fuckery happening under the aegis of the Pax Americana in the postwar years, is turds.
Edited by math792d on Nov 13th 2018 at 5:21:38 PM
Still not embarrassing enough to stan billionaires or tech companies.

1948 Trump: "Look at globalist Truman trying to propel the United Nations failed institution. With League of Nations, we got world destroying war and europeans begging to us on their knees. Well, maybe not such a bad idea!"
Life is unfair...