Weren’t Germany and Japan beaten to a pulp in a massive world war, then run by friendly, pacifist, puppet governments for a very long time before anyone really trusted them again? Not sure how optimistic I should be about America’s standing if that is the standard!
Well we’ve got the puppet government part down.
(No disrespect to all of those people fighting for our values and government.)
Eh, Japan still doesn’t have a real military…
But even if i accepted your statement, there is a difference.
Sure, Germany is trusted, but the US status was more than that. The US was the leader of the Free world after WWII. The free world largely depended on the US being there and helping.
I do not know that the US will ever regain that level of regard, because we can’t be trusted to not elect people like Trump, and Trump can’t be trusted to make good on our word.
And now it looks like Russia might be able to just roll over… looks at notes… Montenegro? WTF? Really? God damn it.
Trump wouldn’t abandon them so easily if they didn’t have negro in their name.
God, that’s really true, isn’t it?
You fucking KNOW it’s true.
It’s not just that, because many of the congressional leaders who allowed this will still be around, the massacre of the State Dept will take a long time to recover from, and the power vacuum will lead to new alignments that the US will be looking in on from the outside.
Did Carlson raise Montenegro out of the blue or did Trump mention them first? Because the more we glean about Trump’s meeting with Putin from his antics over the last couple of days, the more it sounds exactly like the sort of thing Putin would have brought up with him. They could have picked any NATO country to go after but Montenegro? That’s exactly the country Putin would have wanted them to go after.
Regarding Montenegro, doesn’t the name just mean Black Mountain? That doesn’t require arcane linguistic knowledge to figure out. So Trump would consider it “lesser” just for that? I mean, he’s an idiot, granted.
Germany is still subject to some fairly strict military restrictions as well (this is part of the reason it has been tough for them to raise military spending to the level Trump complains about), most notably the cap on their military at 370,000 personnel. There are some provisions in there about where troops can be stationed in Germany, weapons of mass destruction and nuclear weapons and a few other things.
I wish it was this simple, I think this more likely to be Putin’s bidding.
Here is a an Op Ed John McCain wrote a year ago. About Montenegro.
In the never end circus of this presidency, it got overlooked even by me and I read practically everything John McCain writes or says.
TL:DR Putin tried and failed to stage a coup in the country and when that failed he tried to kill the prime minister. The bottom line is that Montenegro was a political black eye for Putin. More importantly, it was one of the increasingly small number of nice places Russian Oligarch can go and spend the billions they’ve ripped off.
This is due to the Maginsky act. One of the principal reason the Maginsky act not only was passed in the US but has spread to other countries is this man.
Bill Browder along with former Russia Amb. McFaul were the two guys who Putin want access to in exchange for that fantastically generous offer to let Mueller’s team interview the Russian intelligence officers.
Now here is another tidbit.
Now this also escaped much noticed, although I do remember reading it and thinking very interesting.
Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Ben Cardin (D-MD), former US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara, and former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul are angry with the Trump administration’s Department of Homeland Security for revoking the visa of British hedge fund manager William Browder, an outspoken critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Browder’s visa was revoked on Saturday, the same day Putin managed to get Browder placed on Interpol’s international watch list. Being on the list means he can’t leave the UK without potentially facing arrest.
In case you are wonder who is Senator Cardin and why is involved. Well ,he is the Democratic Co-sponsor, along with, no surprise John McCain, of the hated Maginsky act. Which if you may remember was one of the actual subjects that was discussed at the first meeting between Don Jr. Manafort, etc.with the Russians at the Trump Tower meeting.
For me the Helsinki meeting has cleared up a lot. I never really figured out why one of the first people that Trump attacked was John McCain. Forget, Hillary, John McCain is Putin #1 enemy in the US he’s done more to thwart Putin than any person on the planet. So Trump attacking McCain was partly loyalty test and partly just an act of revenge. If there was a way to cause brain cancer, I’m sure Putin’s agents would have figured it out.
The second question that we’ve all had is, Is Putin has Trump turned, why in the hell is Trump so damn obvious?
I’ve reached this conclusion. This isn’t about the West it is about maintaining control and reviving the USSR. Putin want’s his enemies and potential enemies to know that I’ve got the President of the United States as my puppet, my Reek.
The US has drones and SEAL teams that can kill anybody, anywhere at anytime.
Vladimir Putin has agents who can poison anywhere. But not only that he’s got the President of the US who can revoke Visa, share intelligence, maybe even extradite. Silly Montenegro you think you can escape my will by joining Nato think again. If the US won’t send troops there to defend you, that treaty does you no good.
Putin was always a pretty terrifying guy, but now with Trump’s help, he is even more deadly than the US military, at a fraction of the price.
It’s really quite astounding Republicans are just sitting idly by while their failed internet steak salesman turned golden cow just blunders about, and it’s all just so obvious (and irony is the wrong word, but Butina using gods and guns to infiltrate the Republican party is like of course. )
In another thread you said you didn’t have a reason to vote for Democrats. I don’t know what other reason you would need. Putin as president by proxy and the GOP is fully complicit.
Oh, for 2018 and 2020, I don’t need any other reason to vote for the Democrats. I’m maybe be conservative but I’m not suicidal. Hopefully, there will be other elections after 2020, and I’m looking for a reason to proactively vote for the Democrats, rather than against whatever pile of shit remains in the Republican party.
Don’t forget sex!
She sure knew how to handle a gun!
This is so The Americans, but this bit…
But she privately expressed “disdain” for him and had him do her homework, prosecutors said.
She had him do her homework too?
In a bit of irony, she’s since earned some spare cash as a tutor.
“I have to write an essay about the exact locations of all American nuclear assets. Can you help me pleeeeeeeeze?”
What’s really great is that because Butina came to the US in 2014, the GOP will once again blame Obama for weak security and allowing a spy to do her business in DC.