zlacker

It requires one to be fairly detached from political reality to describe U.S. military forces in German as an occupation. You lose credibility by saying such a thing. You should reconsider the sources of your information.

>>syzari+(OP)
On the contrary, it is an objective portrayal of the facts which is not clouded by political smoke and mirrors.

Washington defeated Germany and Japan in the 1940s and proceeded to demilitarize them and occupy them with its own forces. This is historically standard military practice. It is not a "nice gesture" from Washington. It was all part of a coherent strategy to contain and confront the rival USSR, around which Germany and Japan represent critical nodes.

>>pphysc+v2
The US pays Germany to be there. Germany leases the land US military bases are on to the US. For Germany this provides security guarantees as Germany doesn’t want to increase funding to its own military and provides economic booms to the local areas. This is far from an occupation.

>>jonnyb+q5
British Monarchists made the same arguments about royal troops in the soon-to-be United States of America.

>>pphysc+v2
What was true 75 years has long since stopped being true. Today no one can reasonably describe U.S. presence in Germany as an occupation. Please reconsider your sources of information. They are duping you and preventing you from understanding present day political reality.

You remind me of the leftists I met when I lived in Kreuzburg in Berlin.

>>syzari+Ra
My sources are the well-established historical fact that US has a permanent standing army of tens of thousands of soldiers inside Germany's national borders. There is no need to resort to name-calling.

>>pphysc+Q9
British taxation of the colonies (e.g. the Stamp Act and others) was in the opposite direction. The British government was not paying the colonies for its presence in what would become the US.

>>vinay4+No
And yet Trump threatened to pull out US troops from Germany because the Germans weren't contributing enough. What did he mean by that?

>>pphysc+Iq
Are you listening to yourself? Trump threatened to pull out US troops, which the Germans didn't want. How is it an occupation when Germans are saying "please don't leave." Germans weren't contributing enough is 100% uncontroversially about German contribution to their own military / defense. US wants European countries to spend their own money on their own defense, at least 2% of GDP. Of course EU countries don't want to spend that money if they don't have to, because they're more than comfortable outsourcing it to the US having to spend $ on those countries' defense in the interest of Pax Americana.

>>pphysc+v2
> Washington defeated Germany and Japan in the 1940s and proceeded to demilitarize them and occupy them with its own forces.

Yes, part of Germany was occuppied by the Western Allies until 1955. And there were sone technical restrictions on the sovereignty of Germany-as-a-whole until the 2+4 Treaty went into full effect in 1991.

But even the later of those dates was almost 17 years before Obama became President.

> It was all part of a coherent strategy to contain and confront the rival USSR

The occupation of the Axis Powers by the Allies, including the USSR, was not part of a strategy to contain the USSR. It may have formed part of the context of such a strategy, but that’s a different thing.