Make Dumb Presidents Amusing Again

trump makes me laugh on a daily basis, but he also makes me hang my head and say "really?" at a 2000% increased rate over Bush.

the whole idea of spending a certain percentage of your gdp is just ridiculous, and it makes little sense strategically speaking. military threats and tasks have to be assessed and addressed specifically, and of course i'm generally fine with bigger economies contributing a larger share of the funding, but making spending a certain amount mandatory, no matter if it's warranted or not, is just an idiotic concept that only leads to unnecessary arms races.

that said, europeans already spend hundreds of billions on their military, so i have no clue why you are perpetuating those silly talking points.



also, if this really was just about europe being able to defend itself, the frenchies alone have enough nukes to blow up the planet a couple of times - and i really don't want germany, or any other country for that matter, to have their own nukes. i'd celebrate if americans finally withdrew their drone murderers and nuclear arsenal from our country - they don't make us safer, quite the opposite.

The EU was a decent plan, but it lacks the ability to have Europe function as a unit. Look, for example at the immigration issue. A lot of the eastern EU countries, just said...sorry, no way we're taking immigrants.
And that's just about immigration. What would hapen if Cjhina did try to invade the EU...would all the EU countries stand together?

I think back on say... Italy in WW II. I realize there was no EU then, but still. Different countries will, when pushed, go their own way, w/o some over reaching more binding arrangement.

The European militaries are underfunded, underequipped, and lack basic combat experience.

France recently struggled to maintain a presence in Libya for more than a few months.

It's fair to say that they would struggle to repel Russian intervention in the Baltic states. Then again, it's fairer to wonder whether Germany and co would do anything at all. Russian gas certainly feels good.

i see this as an absolute win. i wish america, china, and russia would follow suit.

If the European NATO countries would strongly follow the 2%, would the US feel comfortable lowering their military expenditure? My instinct says hell no. In what way then is the US currently compensating for the lack of 2% in European NATO members? This is an argument that is often made.

Adding on to this, there's a fair amount of people here who wouldn't have as much of a problem with higher military expenditure if that money were spent locally. The fact that a ton of our military expenditure ends up in the US MIC pockets does not make people happy.

The United States would probably be comfortable redirecting that expenditure to East Asia where its sorely needed.

"wahh! why wont the US taxpayer subsidize our defense while we continue to spend on other things!"

Way to misrepresent the entire thread.