Comments by "David Ford" (@davidford3115) on "Can the US continue to be the POLICE of the WORLD? - VisualPolitik EN" video.

@succatash WRONG on ALL counts. First, NATO is a DEFENSE ALLIANCE, not an equal opportunity employment agency. Its first and foremost priority is defense, ignoring all other considerations. If diversity and inclusion takes priority over defense, you are already dead. As for the Anglo vs non-Anglo divide in NATO, you are imagining something there that confirms your preconceived notions. It wasn't US/UK and all the other members. As I said, the former Warsaw Pact members of NATO were practically in lock step with the US and the UK. It was France, who historically was always obstinate, that was the cause of most strife in NATO. Germany since unification has been something of a joke as not even the Germans take the Bundeswehr seriously. As for the "Trip Wire" policy, that was more a result of the situation and pragmatism. I can assure you that American military planners before this year wanted to station troops in forward locations. Hell, Bush got flak for wanting to put troops in Poland. Did you know that NONE of the Bridges East of the Vistula are capable of handling Abrams Tank traffic? Not even the rail bridges are capable of handling the weight. It is little details like that which made it impossible to forward deploy many NATO assets. This is a weakness known to military planners since the fall of the Iron Curtain, but they couldn't do much about it.
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@succatash Diversity by itself is no strength. Diversity for its own sake creates divisions and strife. Eastern Europe doesn't seem to have a problem with NATO being Anglo dominated. France could have had a bigger impact on NATO had Charles de Galle not unilaterally pulled out of NATO.
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"Democracy" as a term has become conflated with Republic style governance. The two are actually not the same thing. "Democracy" is what gave rise to the Jacobin Faction and the Reign of Terror under Robespierre. Republic is what guards the "human rights" you get to enjoy. It is when those built-in protections become subverted that you get the "flaws" which critics of the West love to point out. "Republics degrade into Democracies, and Democracies invariably degenerate into despotisms, "-Alexander Fraiser Tytler quoting Aristotle.
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@succatash You are not listening at all are you? No, you are so stuck on your woke ideology and identity politics that you would put the defense of Europe at risk because diversity is more important to you than showing a united front against an aggressor. It is people like you who break ranks and display cowardice before the enemy. It is people like you that use Americans as cannon fodder with no gains on the battlefield. YOU are the cause of strife that weakens the NATO alliance because your identitarianism takes priority over the lives of the men in the field.
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Your Trump derangement is discrediting anything else you have to say. Trump's stance on NATO was because NONE, save for the former Warsaw Pact and the UK were meeting their defense spending quotas required by the terms of the alliance. He was doing what is called "The Big Ask". He was bluffing them into meeting their obligations by threatening to pull out of NATO. As far as military commitments, you seem to blatantly ignore the fact that Obama pulled out of Iraq against the advice of the neocons only to have to enact "The Surge" because what they predicted would happen came true. Afghanistan was a collapse in slow motion because nation building was NOT the goal, capturing or killing Bin Laden was. Afghanistan became a repeat of the very same blunders of Vietnam where in the body count was more important than any strategic or even tactical gains. Take a look at how much of the country the Taliban controlled in 2014 and it becomes no surprise that the fall of Kabul was only a matter of time because the generals didn't know what they were really doing. Further, under Obama, the US military shrank to numbers not seen since BEFORE WORLD WAR ONE. So don't blame Trump for the actions of those incompetent leaders before him. His biggest screw up was that he listened to the advice of "experts" in Washington rather than the input of the men on the ground and in the fight.
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