European view of US defense policy.

 Europe is rethinking its reliance on the United States as regards defense policy.  I am way out of date on the subject and only have inadequate news snippets to go on, but world events would seem to make it inevitable that Europeans would increasingly doubt American resolve to fight and die in the defense of Europe.  We turned tail and ran from Afghanistan just the other day and we did not even tell our European allies that were in Afghanistan with us that we were abandoning both our Afghan "allies" and them to the Taliban.  Very comfortable American civilians, too busy to think about far off dirty hell holes, may not see much of importance in the matter, but I guarantee that you would if your ass was in the fox hole.

And then there is the ongoing stupidity in Ukraine where Europeans clearly see America's policy as being to hide behind Ukrainian surrogates to deal with Russian aggression and, because that policy is getting to be "too expensive," and is going nowhere useful, America is seriously considering abandoning Ukraine.  (The vast majority of Europeans will refuse to acknowledge the wisdom of using Ukraine as a lever to deal with US border policy.)  Donald Trump is presumably delighted by the European angst that is evident, but sees the numbers being discussed in the European debate on defense spending as being inadequate.  Were the world still engaged in the struggle against the Soviets, I would agree with him, but the world has changed and the out-dated Cold War strategy is no longer adequate to deal with the challenge.  I over simplify, but NATO was a useful tool when future war was to be industrial in nature.  It is not any longer.  In the current world, industrial war with one or another major antagonist is but prelude to nuclear war, and we refuse to understand that simple fact of life and death.

All of the hoopla in the newspapers is focused on inadequate supplies of artillery shells, but the real issue is that Ukraine and Russia are literally running out of soldiers.  Think about who is being killed in both Russia and Ukraine - the casualties are robbing both countries of the very generation that would be necessary to build a different future.  The whole mess staggers the imagination, if we but had some imagination, but we don't.  We are willfully blind, very nice, stinking cowards, stuck in antiquated slogans and it is going to get you and me killed.  We do not have the balls nor the wisdom necessary to step up to the plate and tell the rest of the world to stop with the killing.  Not only that, we actually encourage far too much of it and then hide our heads in our hands when the going gets tough.

If a deity did create us, he, she, or it has obviously decided to get rid of his, her or its' mistake.  Kenya is the only country in the entire world that is worried about Haiti?  I ask you, the American citizen that is a responsible citizen in a democracy what you think about our policy in Burkina Faso, or Myanmar, or Nicaragua?  All I hear is prattle about soap operas, where in an orange haired playboy grabs a woman by the pussy, and says stupid things about other politicians that shower with their daughters and sniff little girls' hair.  Geez, people wake the hell up!  Go ahead and change the sign on the bathroom door, snuff the fetus, put more potato chips in the bag, and for heaven's sake don't stress anyone's feelings, but when you have finished correcting the mistakes of our ancestors, please devote a little of your time to keeping us, you and me, alive.