Archangel1313

Yes, they would...insofar as defense is concerned. They won't necessarily aid the US in acts of aggression or escalation, but they will absolutely defend US forces in the region. But, just to be clear...Israel is not a NATO member...so as far as Article 5 is concerned, they are not an obligation, the way the US is. If the US chooses to step in on their behalf, NATO is not required to get involved.

This would be similar to what happened after 9/11. NATO all came to the US's defense when it came to going after Bin Laden in Afghanistan...but once it was shown that he had fled the country, only the US remained. Then, when they decided to invade Iraq next, almost no one followed them.

Ummm, yeah. You didn't actually read what I wrote. I never said the US would respect its alliances...I said the rest of NATO would. If Trump is banking on Europe bailing on their promises first, in order to justify his own betrayal, then it isn't going to work.

Unlike him, the rest of NATO understands the importance of being unified in their objectives, .even if sometimes that unity is just for show.

As for the rest of us hay you were talking about...I think you have vastly overestimated Trump's intellectual grasp of history. He doesn't give a shit about US / European history. He doesn't even fucking read. He cares about money. Right now...and how much. He will do whatever he is paid to do, as long as you outbid the competition. None of that other shit matters.

If that's true, then Trump is a bigger idiot than he seems.

NATO won't refuse to defend the US. They aren't so stupid as to abandon their responsibility to Article 5. That doesn't mean the US will do the same, but NATO takes that promise seriously.

If he's betting on Europe being the one to drop that ball, then he hasn't read the room.

They already signed that contract. This is just Israel attacking them anyway.

Why would Cuba even want to trade with the US? They have full trade access to every other country in the region. The US market would only harm Cuban culture and overrun their economy.

Claiming that Cuba would be doing so much better, if only they had more access to US markets, is disingenuous Capitalist propaganda.

Gee. It's almost like they had advanced warning that things in the middle East were about to go sideways. But, sure...tell us again how Netanyahu went rogue by attacking Iran. It makes so much more sense to believe this was an unexpected turn of events, and the US knew nothing of his plans. /s

You know they're not going to stop there, though...right? Just look at what they're doing in Gaza. They're going to "liberate Iran", alright. But, they don't care if they end up bombing women and children in the process.

Next, they'll start targeting schools, because that's where the Iranian government indoctrinates its children, and hospitals because that's where they treat Iranian soldiers injured in Israeli attacks. See, folks? They're just trying to help. /s

This explains it in better detail than I could. It isn't so much a single law, but rather a lot of different laws that all work together to ensure that Israel is given everything it could possibly need for its own defense...even bypassing normal regulatory measures in the process, as long as certain conditions are maintained.

Israel has invested tens of millions of dollars lobbying for, and helping to write, the legislation that guarantees their continuous access to weapons. A lot of it is written directly into defense spending bills that are essential for domestic defense spending as well. So, without a massive shift in policy at the legislative level to disentangle those priorities, that support is legally binding.

Aaaww...their first illegal action. How adorable.

Yeah, well...I certainly didn't detect any indication that he was planning on changing his direction, just because some farmers and service industry folks were upset about having their employees snatched off the job.

When people started acting like he was softening his approach, I went back and read it again, and still couldn't understand why they thought that. It really sounded to me like he was saying, "too bad for you...things have to change", not "I didn't realize this would hurt you...I need to change".

When I read the, "things are going to change" line...I assumed he was saying that his current policy of kidnapping workers was the change in question.

He kind of rolled it into the statement he was making about ending "Biden's open borders policy", so it kind of felt like he was saying, no more letting immigrants have any options for sanctuary within the system. That's what's going to change, from now on. No?