[ConservativeInPA]

Bull crap. You won’t change my mind on this. You can’t even tangibly enumerate America’s interests. I don’t give a crap about Europe or Ukraine. Europe can provide their own defense and stop relying on the American taxpayers. This is just as bad as Wilson’s war. We had no business being involved in WWI either.

[BroJoeK]

"This is just as bad as Wilson’s war.
We had no business being involved in WWI either.

My late grandfather would agree with you, he hated that war.
But the truth is the U.S. supported our British & French allies from Day One, with massive loans and arms shipments.
So we were invested deeply in Allied victory, and when Germans began unrestricted U-Boat sinkings of our cargo ships, attempted to ally with Mexico to invade our Southern border (you may remember, we did use to have a border), and began preparing for a massive new offensive in France, Wilson flipped from anti-war to pro, and began working on a plan for "peace without victory".

Point is, we supported the Allies from the beginning and then went All In when it began to look like our team was losing.

[pierrem15]

I can quite easily enumerate America's tangible interests: a) first, doing nothing about Ukraine now would mean -inevitably- an attack on the Baltics or Poland or elsewhere on NATO. After all, why not, if we do not react to naked aggression now, why would Russia think we would later? b) allowing Europe with its wealth and defense tech to become thrall to Moscow or Beijing (or both) by withdrawing cannot possibly be in America's interests. It's not that Europe can't pay for it's own defense- it simply does not have any political organization capable of doing so, despite the EU.

I don't like this state of affairs any more than you do. Even my relatives in Europe cringe every time some European politician asks why the Americans aren't taking care of some problem. But I can't see how pretending Europe doesn't matter makes it so.