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More Bad History
With the announcement that President Trump wanted to bring up to one-third of US troops from our permanent bases in Germany, Rep. Liz Cheney tweeted out the following:
Ok. If you want to argue that it’s bad policy, fine. Make your case. If you want to drag the founding of the nation into it, then you better think twice. As certain members of this community will attest, I’m not a big fan of bad history or history distorted to fit an agenda.
Has she never read George Washington’s farewell address? (“…nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded…”) Has she not read Thomas Jefferson? (“Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto.”) Is she totally unaware that a generation ago, the man who was known as “Mr. Republican,” Robert A Taft, Sr., was a staunch “non-interventionist?” While we lament the current situation on our shores, maybe we should have been taking care of business in our neighborhoods instead of worrying about what was happening in the suburbs of Baghdad?
Oh! the NeverTrumpers cry, he’s doing Putin’s bidding! Please raise your hand if you think the Russians are ready to steamroll across the plains of Poland and into Germany. Hell, all he really has to do is cut off the natural gas just as he did in 2009. With Germany abandoning coal and crude oil for energy production, that will give him even more leverage.
Perhaps if Rep. Cheney wants or needs a more recent history lesson she should look into the proposals that went even further than Trump’s. In the not-so-distant past, the Pentagon was proposing cuts of 50 percent or more. The New York Times Editorial Board chimed in:
“There is nothing sacrosanct about maintaining particular Army divisions in Germany. The role of American military forces there has evolved considerably over the decades — from occupying a defeated enemy to deterring Warsaw Pact aggression to symbolizing Washington’s post-cold-war commitment to remain militarily engaged in Europe. Along the way, the size of the American presence has evolved as well. In the nearly 15 years since the Berlin Wall fell, United States force levels in Germany have dropped by roughly 75 percent.”
Who was leading these efforts in the glory days of American foreign policy? Well, that was 2004 and I suspect she’s probably going to see the old man for Father’s Day…
Published in Foreign Policy
The misery they initiate always gets us involved.
China doesn’t try to avoid that. Are we not one of China’s customers? There must be a lot more to these relationship than producer/customer.
I guess that’s why he never made any money.
As also happens when it doesn’t. Maybe there is a pattern!
I also saw this morning, that Germany is not expected to be up to their required spending levels for NATO defense until 2031. If that’s true, then why are we even debating this? And what is keeping Germany from fulfilling their obligations? When those who are opposing Trump’s decision can answer those questions, then I’ll start taking them seriously.
My criticism of Trump is that there will be any US troops left in Europe and that the US is still a member of Nato. Nato was formed for the Cold War and that’s been over for almost 30 years.
I am not opposed to negotiating a new treaty in principle. Depends on what is in the treaty and its purpose. But it should be broader than defense. And some countries should be excluded. And perhaps new ones included.
Trump is a genius compared with the idiots who have run American foreign policy since thr end of the Cold War.
West Germany was the Soviet Union’s largest supplier as well back in the day. Let’s hope it works the same miracle for Iran.
Always? No.
If Roosevelt had spent the WPA money on armaments, the Japanese would not have bombed us and Hitler wouldn’t have declared war on us.
Teump is belatedly focusing defence spending on new systems and new R&D.
She comes up with the silliest arguments sometimes.
Same as my previous comment.
My FBI agent daughter was visiting back before the Chinese virus locked us all down. She was watching Sunday TV news, something I never do, and as I walked by she volunteered in a loud voice, “Trump is such an incompetent!” I asked her if 27,000 Dow and 3.5% unemployment meant anything to her. “No,” the government employee said. We don’t discuss politics usually. She is not the same daughter who asked me if I could give her another gun last week. This one carries her 10mm Glock everywhere.
Hopefully that’s the only thing your daughter is irrational about. Otherwise I fear (even more) for the FBI.
Not helping me view that every last FBI agent bshould be fired and we start over.
If I got my news from the teevee I might have the same opinion as your daughter.
She did tell me in September 2016 that she would NOT vote for Hillary. She is a natural Hillary voter; female, overweight, left wing and single. That she said that suggested to me that the FBI grapevine knows Hillary is dirty and the rank and file might be turning states evidence, so to speak. I think Comey’s famous July 2016 press conference was to head off an agent revolt.
What about Joe Biden? Anything criminal in his influence peddling benefiting family members?
No one’s still answered the question of who FBI’s headquarters was afraid of in October of 2016 that cause McCabe to finally inform Comey of the emails on Huma’s computer that hubby was using for sexting — was the NYPD threatening to rat them out, or was FBI-New York threatening to leak to the media?
I’m a big fan of Liz Cheney, but she is not right here. We should be pulling back troops from Germany because the threat is no longer the same. Sure, Russia is aggressive, but they have their sites set on the Baltic states. If they hit there, we can redeploy troops back to Germany. Keeping troops in Germany is expensive, the Germans don’t like them, WWII occupation has run it’s coarse except the US Army still retains hunting rights and few choice vacation areas. But the Germans don’t deserve our protection any more than what they put into their own protection — which is very little — by comparison.