Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails:<\/p>\n
\nTrump is trumpeting a trade deal with the EU.\u00a0 I put no stock in trade deals, they don’t last and everybody cheats. I put more stock in the mindset that “you’ve been riding our coattails long enough, we’re cutting you loose.”\u00a0 End of the free ride, end of the Marshall Plan, end of NATO riding piggyback on the US.
That’s what I was hoping Trump was going to say when Europe ignored his 2% defense spending demand during his first term, and is ignoring his 5% demand during this second term: “We’re done.” Same with Ukraine – don’t threaten more sanctions on Russia, threaten to pull every CIA officer out and cut off all funding, all intelligence sharing, all weapons transfers, until every nation in NATO either (a) steps up to declare war on Russia or (b) steps up to convince Ukraine to surrender.\u00a0\u00a0 Because that’s where it’s going to end up.\u00a0 Ukraine is losing everything East of the river including Odessa.\u00a0 Everybody knows it.\u00a0 Nobody is willing to die for Ukraine, not even their own people.\u00a0 So cut to the chase and surrender that territory now.\u00a0 Ask for safe passage for Ukrainians who want to evacuate to the West.\u00a0 Guarantee safe passage for those who wish to flee to the East.
If Trump wants to be the hero who ended the war, sanctions and bluster won’t work.\u00a0 Walk away from the negotiating table.\u00a0\u00a0 Wait for them to come to their senses.\u00a0 Then declare a victory, Mission Accomplished.
Joe Doakes<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nI’ve been supporting a free and independent Ukraine since most Democrats were saying the USSR was here to stay.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But it’s time for Europe to show how much their own security really matters to them\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails: Trump is trumpeting a trade deal with the EU.\u00a0 I put no stock in trade deals, they don’t last and everybody cheats. I put more stock in the mindset that “you’ve been riding our coattails long enough, we’re cutting you loose.”\u00a0 End of the free ride, end of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=89819"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89819\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89820,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89819\/revisions\/89820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=89819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=89819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=89819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}