So, I find it kind of interesting, the latest news from our partners in NATO, with regards to the problem in Iraq. No, honestly I do! I’m referring to the combination of France and Germany both refusing to allow military planning of an attack on Iraq, which stems from a request of Turkey, which is the only NATO member country to share a border with Iraq. I find it to be very interesting that Germany would side with France, given the first and second World War. You’d think the French would learn from history, right?

My problem with the French runs back to the time just after the first World War. Their part in WWI was honorable; they fought with the rest of Europe and came out on the winning side – no issues there. Shortly after WWI, when Germany was putting itself back together again through the twenties, the French sorta get nervous and decide to defend themselves. To do this they build a wall along their eastern most border. A wall with an impressive list of armorments, but it’s still just a wall! As history shows, the German, while attacking France in WWII, just marched around the wall and sacked the countryside. I also find it interesting that Paris was the only major capital in the war arena of Europe that went without any amount of fighting. And I also know that without the UK and the US, France would still be speaking German, since they couldn’t get themselves out of their own complacency. The wall that they built acted like a bumper; the Germans could retreat back into it, if they had to, and fight from a fortified position that their enemies built for protection from themselves. Sort of ironic.

But that’s in the distant past. Over the last couple of decades, the French have seemed to make it a habit of saying no to everyone else in the world. In this instance, they seem content to say “No no no” until someone threatens their borders; then they cry for help. They see Iraq as a threat, yet they don’t want to lift a finger to help nullify the threat – in fact, they seem to enjoy stopping other people from taking care of such things. In this instance, the US is prepared to pony up the resources and manpower to nullify a threat to our nation – if not the whole middle-east area and the world – but the French take the “Oh, don’t worry about it – it will go away on its own” sounding like the hare in an old children’s story.

Germany’s resistance to fighting, is not nearly as psychologically deep. They have a new trade agreement with Iraq for desperately needed oil and, well, they just don’t want to see it all blown up. It’s just the irony of France and Germany aligned together on any issue that tickles my funny bone; I disregard Belgium’s “no fighting” position as happenstance, since I doubt they would stand alone on the issue and need the two larger powers to take a stance like this. Time will tell if this was a “me too” I guess.

What still eludes me is how we ended up in this situation in the first place. I mean we, the US, are the “last superpower” in the world, which I’m told means that we’re some father figure to the world. Every year we dump billions of dollars on the world, to help out countries that need aid. Most of the money goes out in the form of loans, but the loans are never repaid; ask Canada and Mexico when they’ll get around to paying back some of their debt to us. We import stuff that is built all over the world, mostly because we want it true, but other nations benefit from our hungry appetite for imports. We always seem to put our own hands in our pockets whenever someone cries help. I even think we get off on the experience of helping the world, since we’ve always been viewed as young, trashy, clueless, and certainly the underdogs by the older nations. They like to take our aid, but now when we have a problem that we need support – not help, but just support – to answer a threat to the world, these nations turn their backs on us.

Ya know what? We have our own problems at home. We’ve got our own homeless and out of work that could always use more help. Maybe we should just stop all the aid and help ourselves – shut down the world supplying money machine, say fuck you to all non-US states (excluding Canada and the UK since they stand with us through all our problems) and pull back all our support, world-wide. If the world doesn’t like the support that we give out, then maybe we should just be considerate and stop it all. Just a thought.

To quote Cartman, “Screw you guys, I’m… goin’ home.”