“Whatever debts the US owed Europe were paid in full with the end of the Cold War”
What in the hell did we OWE Europe? We basically just spent the last 100 years cleaning up their messes around the world and in their own backyards. WE,,owed THEM?
I do think, however, that it is in our own long term interest to have stable, democratic, free market, pro-Western governments across Europe. (And elsewhere, for that matter.) We waged a 40 year Cold War to save Europe. There has been great progress since the fall of the Berlin Wall. There have been problems as well, but I would not for a moment want to turn back the clock.
But something very ugly and dangerous is happening right now, and Obama continues in his by-now fully expected pattern of forfeiting the U.S. national interest by, at best, incompetent neglect, and perhaps something worse.
The isolationists will take a different view. I'm not saying that you are among them, or not, but they are about, and as wrong as ever.