After years of advocating "America First," President Donald Trump's administration, the Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced on Friday, "I'm also proud that today we're signing a letter of acceptance to build a Qatari Emiri Air Force facility at the Mountain Home Airbase in Idaho."It led to a...
Imagine building military bases in foreign countries then freaking out when a foreign country builds a military base in yours: the US finally gets to know how it feels.
Exactly what expeditonary capacity does Qatar have? US based across Europe and Pacific are in compliance with NATO and other defensive treaties. US and Qatar have no such agreements. This entire deal is just Trump and co pocketing a bribe.
Exactly what “epiditionary capacity” does the US have? They don’t need permanent bases on foreign soil any more than foreign countries need bases on US soil. US taxpayers certainly don’t want to pay for all this armed forces bloat.
I mean the US is one of the few countries that can put like 30k dudes in country at the drop of a hat with thousands more coming right behind. It’s the only reason some countries dealt with us at all.
Those countries can learn to take care of themselves: the US doesn’t need to let them freeload by outsourcing armed services to the US instead of investing in their own. While all that US taxpayer spending to bloat the armed services isn’t appreciably improving US living standards with better social services (education, healthcare, poverty & work programs) or going to foreign aid, those countries investing less in their armed services from this arrangement get to dedicate more of their spending to improve their living standards with better social services.
Alliances don’t require permanent foreign bases: allies can train with & host partners on an as-needed basis when the occasion demands. US taxpayers would prefer to invest in better alternatives that appreciably improve their lives.
That wasn’t the question though
It answers why the US doesn’t need bases on foreign soil & why its taxpayers don’t want them either.
That’s not a question that was asked.
Unfortunately, even if we could convince them to cut military spending, they wouldn’t use the recaptured funds to improve American life, they’d just give it to the Sociopathic Oligarchs
That goes for both MAGAs and Dems. The Dems are no different than MAGAs, they would much rather smooch the donors than the voters.
Probably not: voters get the politicians they vote for. At least it’s not wasted on armed services & foreign bases US taxpayers don’t want or need. The mere fact it could be spent better is enough reason not to spend it there.
As if trump, or any of the newly elected right wing European prime ministers are going to invest in social services. It’s all about austerity or war machine funding.
None of that changes the fact that US taxpayers don’t want to overspend on armed services with their foreign bases & none of that is necessary for an alliance: they’re unneeded & unwanted.
It’s also ironic to see some Americans whine about the military invasion of their cities while they’ve been doing much much worse in other countries, against international laws. It’s only appropriate to surround a building with helicopters in the middle of the night, invade their homes, force whole families outside and treat them like animals when it’s done by heroes finding WMDs in a country full of terrorists, not in American cities.
To be fair, many of those “whining” also disagree with our history of international conduct.
The same people who want to “bring democracy” to foreign nations are also cheering on these city invasions.
We aren’t all shitty.
Indeed. They are absolutely right to whine and should in fact do much more than just that. In a way it’s what makes it easy to be cynical about the situation.
At least so far your heroes haven’t cut power, water, and destroyed civilian infrastructure. Although apparently destroying schools wouldn’t change much in terms of education.
But still. You aren’t all shitty. Of course. It’s just that the good people will still let this happen and even participate if you give them a reason. I’m old enough to remember the Freedom Fries. I’m old enough to remember people protesting the illegal invasion of another country by the US. See its civilians tortured and described as “collateral damage”. And the people that participated in this are heroes. Veterans. Commenting here. Saying that no, the US will not invade Canada, or Mexico, or Greenland, because the population, and even the troops, wouldn’t allow it. English is not my native language and I struggle to describe how fucking naive, gullible, and wrong that is.
I could easily be stuck in the US but the “lottery of life” made me born 200 km North of its borders. We don’t choose where we live, or get bombed by a US missile. Some people in the US certainly also know that. I’m just sorry there isn’t more of them/you.