Posted on 02/22/2025 9:54:07 AM PST by ChicagoConservative27
On Friday’s “PBS NewsHour,” Washington Post Associate Editor and MSNBC host Jonathan Capehart stated that it’s incorrect to claim that Europe is ripping off the United States on defense by not spending enough on their defense because they’re not “paying the United States money in a protection racket.” It’s just people want them to “spend more of your GDP on your own defense, rise up to the level of where the United States is, relatively speaking” so that “the burden is more fairly shared.”
New York Times columnist David Brooks stated that Europe has increased its defense spending.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
The spending will certainly rise now that they know the US isn’t gonna be big brother 24/7.
So if my roommate wasn’t paying his share of the rent, he isn’t ripping me off, he’s just “not fairly sharing the burden”.
Europe can fund their own wars to make the world safe for perverts—not one dime from the American taxpayer.
It's a Marxist thing....
Or Capehart hasn't been to dinner with the "special person" ordering expensive "everythings" and then asking that everybody split the tab. Learned that lesson once, and once only.
"Let's NOT split the bill" peeves those who expect us to "split the bill."
Europe Isn’t Ripping Us Off on Defense, Just Not Fairly Sharing the BurdenAKA ripping us off.
Double speak. lying by omission.
Capehart is such an idiot.
Please explain the difference.
“Ripping Us Off” ≍ “Not Fairly”
That’s a pretty good analogy that most could understand.
NATO and European defense could be a bit more complicated, though. Let’s face it, America wouldn’t be there and paying at all, without an interest to us (ideally). The “defense” is against a former Soviet Union and China. America expects the Europeans to take the brunt of attack for us, just because of the geography. It is in America’s interest that this occur, and not some dumb-a$$ “Fortress America” approach. This is, historically, why we are there.
Times change, however, and there is no more a Soviet Union. China is now powerful enough to threaten the US directly through the Pacific. This is a scenario where NATO will bow out and not lift a finger to aid the US, I believe.
Russia did a pi$$-poor job handling the collapse of the Soviet Union. It left a nuclear Ukraine with independent weapons manufacturing (if I understand correctly) and borders that did not accommodate independence.
The US has done as badly in maintaining NATO - an organization as corrupted, I am sure, as what DOGE is already revealing in America in other spheres. Germany is now reunited, with NATO countries now supposedly “protected” by an aging stockpile of GDR missiles, that probably use Soviet batteries.
What a world!
Which means… we’re getting ripped off. Leftist ”logic” makes zero sense.
We have standards for our blood and treasure - and we’re not just willy nilly handing it out to corrupt world ‘elites’ anymore. Meet the minimum standard or protect yourselves - and raise your own army.
Capehart is starting to get it...
And before WWII, Ukraine did what? Grow wheat?
The Soviet Union built Ukraine into what it was for its own (Russian) reasons.
And the Soviet Union rebuilt Poland and East Germany after WW2. Does that mean they do not have a right to independence from Russia?
Putin in 2003 signed a treaty with Ukraine called the “Treaty Between the Russian Federation and Ukraine on the Russian–Ukrainian State Border”. It set Ukraine’s borders as they were in 1991 & was lodged with the UN.
‘It’s not a tax increase - it’s a revenue enhancement!’
And the Soviet Union rebuilt Poland and East Germany after WW2.
I guess dismantling whole factories and shipping them to The Soviet Union is “rebuilding”.
The arrangement would have worked if Obama/Biden is still the President. They were ultra-leftists who believe that we should live in one state.
I think you intentionally miss my point. I said that the Soviet Union did a pi$$-poor job in handling its own collapse, especially in Ukraine. It thought it could let the status-quo slide as long as pro-Russia puppet governments were installed.
To answer your question, though - No, the Ukraine does NOT have the right to Russian fuel rods for its reactors. It had no right to nuclear-tipped missiles, in place to defend a Soviet Union, or any strategic bombers serving a similar function.
It has the right to returning to grow wheat.
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