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Fly Lands on Obama's Face, World Net Daily Raves About Satan - Update: Satan Discovered Writing for WND

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Killgore Trout1/25/2013 3:27:50 pm PST

Why is the United States paying for its ally’s adventures in Africa?

For years, Republicans and Democrats alike have asked our allies (particularly those in NATO) to shoulder more of the cost for providing security in our interconnected world. To their credit, many allies — including the French, Germans, British, Italians, Canadians, Australians, and Poles — maintain robust ground forces and have provided significant numbers of troops in Afghanistan. However, these same countries have largely refrained from the types of long-term investment in their defense capabilities necessary to secure their interests (and ours) in places like Mali, Libya, or Syria. And, for better or worse, the United States enables this behavior by continuing to backstop these missions, whether with precision-guided munitions for the Libya campaign, or strategic airlift for the Mali offensive.
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At some point the United States must force this issue with its allies, lest we create a moral hazard by allowing France and other friends to construct a foreign policy that’s built on a foundation of U.S. military capability and funded by U.S. taxpayers. We need a new business model for NATO, one in which our allies share their security burdens more smartly, with greater complementarity and collaboration between allies than we have today. To date our allies have resisted this model, largely because they think it will diminish their sovereignty. This must change, and only a “tough love” policy, such as the one being pushed by the White House on France now, will incentivize our allies to shoulder their share of the task, whether in Mali or the next place where we act in the world.