The Kurds took most of the casualties fighting ISIS, alongside us.
However, this is not really an issue of owing anyone. It’s an issue of not letting radical Islam get a head of steam and REALLY screwing things up.
An example?
Now, you might not like global commerce / interconnectedness (a slightly different thing than “globalism), but, it has evolved because it is the most efficient system of wealth and product creation and distribution that humans have come up with on a large scale, so far. Its efficiency in fact allows the huge wastes of the welfare state, vastly excess bureaucracy, most lawyers, runs off the rails like the green agenda, etc., without most of us living like North Koreans or worse. It is a very powerful, very complex, and very highly tuned “engine”. This system is sort of like a modern liquid fuel rocket engine, except practically EVERYTHING is interconnected as well as “everything has to work within a small margin of error”. This system has taken the Western world and its friends like Japan and S. Korea to incredible heights of human wellbeing. (Physical wellbeing, anyway.)
BUT, much like that rocket engine, while some minor problems can be corrected / dealt with, and some areas have notable redundancies, exceptionally complex control systems, etc., in many ways our system is incredibly vulnerable and fragile. This is what leads to things like a horde of impoverished (mostly) Houthis with an arms supplier (Iran) being in a position to cause a major economic disaster. And I’m not kidding. We are looking at major shipping routes not just going up in shipping cost and delays, but with very large deficiencies in shipping capacity. Many routes that go through the Red Sea double, triple, or even quadruple the voyage times to go around. And (while a bit of an over-simplification), unless you have a bunch of extra ships on hand, voyage times are inversely proportional to delivery quantities. This reads “shortages”. If the product is essential or even more so a bedrock of an economy, say, LNG to Europe, already in a supply / price bind (somewhat reduced recently), this puts enormous pressure on prices across the board in an already inflationary environment.
In that particular case, LNG, the US likely benefits directly from exports but suffers some inflation. The bigger problem is, though, that interconnectedness. Major upheaval in Europe WILL affect us badly. And LNG is just the 1st example. Many other countries (start with Japan?) are in the mix, too.
That’s what is at stake.
Should other countries contribute more to security? Well, probably so, but then they get a bigger voice. Hmmm...
How much more well armed is REALLY dicey. History tells us a Europe well armed enough for its countries to defend themselves is possibly the most dangerous place on the planet. Not today, of course. But in a generation, should the US step back and the Euros make up the difference (probably includes several more with substantial nuclear capability)? History has a way of pretty much having its way if given the chance. A muscular Japan in, say, 30 years, and feeling threatened? Will it remember its lessons?
Humans are pretty poor about that.
The best defense against radical Islam is to ban Muslim migrants from coming to the West, and to leave Muslim nations alone.
Bombing Muslim nations only creates instability and refugees.
Pat Buchanan: "They're over here, because we're over there."
Buchanan warned us that toppling Saddam would be like breaking a hornet's nest. Saddam had everything under control, as did Gadaffi, and we could deal with them. We can't deal with millions of random migrants pouring into the West.