Colombo

In the last 48 hours: Hegseth fired the Army's top general. In the middle of a war. Iran rejected every US demand and walked out of peace talks. Trump called NATO a "paper tiger" and threatened to quit. No exit strategy. No allies. No negotiating partner. Now no Army Chief of Staff. This can’t be a war with a plan. It's a war with a press office.

THIS.

51% of Republican voters think the US doesn't benefit from NATO. Let's talk about what actually happens to them if this war kills the alliance. The Strait of Hormuz moves 20% of global oil. It's already disrupted. Energy prices are climbing now, with NATO intact and allies still nominally on side. Remove the alliance. Remove the forward bases. Remove the logistics infrastructure that took 75 years to build. Watch what happens to the price of filling your truck in Kentucky. NATO isn't charity. It's the architecture that lets the US project power cheaply. Bases in Germany, Italy, Spain, the UK. Pre-positioned equipment. Intelligence sharing. Burden sharing. Walk away and you don't just lose allies. You lose the scaffolding that makes American military dominance affordable. Meanwhile Russia's oil revenues are surging from the exact war Trump started without asking a single ally. The people cheering NATO's collapse are the same people who'll be hit hardest at the pump, the grocery store, and the mortgage table when the economic shockwaves land. America First. Tell me how that's working out?

@Microinteracti1 If you shit all over your allies and don't bother consulting them over the war you plan to start, don't be surprised if they tell you to go fuck yourself when you go begging for help.

@Microinteracti1 NATO is a defensive alliance formed against russia. Not to help the US fight another stupid fucking forever war in the middle east.

NATO just told America: not through our skies. A furious US general went on Fox News and confirmed it. Italy. Germany. Spain. France. Every single one of them. Airspace closed. Bases locked. Go find another way. The empire built 75 years of alliances for exactly this moment. And when the moment came, the allies watched from the window. Fighting alone. In the Middle East, nobody cares. Gandalv / @Microinteracti1

THIS!

Let me explain something to the MAGA crowd, because clearly someone needs to. They seem to think NATO is cosmic room service. You pick up the phone, say “hello, we’re having a bit of a war here,” and thirty-one countries march to your rescue. A continental Uber for military adventures. That is not how it works. Article 5 is a mutual defense clause. The clue is in the word mutual. And it has been triggered exactly once in NATO’s entire history. After September 11. When America was attacked. Not Europe. America. Every NATO member showed up. They went to Afghanistan. They fought. They bled. They died. In America’s war. On America’s behalf. Now imagine they hadn’t. Over 1,100 allied soldiers died in Afghanistan. British, Canadian, German, Danish, Polish. And yes, even Ukrainian soldiers, who had no NATO obligation whatsoever. Gone. Without them, those are American names on those graves. Sons from Ohio. Fathers from Georgia. Kids from Nebraska who never came home. Then there is the money. NATO allies spent over 100 billion dollars on a war that started on American soil. Without that, Washington pays every cent. On top of the 2 to 3 trillion the war already cost. And without allied bases across Europe and Central Asia, American supply lines collapse entirely. Without British forces in Helmand and Canadians in Kandahar, the Taliban reconstitutes in three years instead of ten. The gaps get filled one way. More American deployments. More American coffins arriving at Dover. Afghanistan was bloody. But NATO took the hit. Without them, every single one of those casualties would have had an American name. Trump called allies like these losers. Suckers. If you are a certain kind of broken person, that probably makes sense to you. But for the rest of us, what those soldiers did has a different name. Honor. The bond between men who have been in the same dirt, under the same fire. Between Brits and Americans, Frenchmen and Norwegians, Canadians and Danes. Not a diplomatic relationship. A blood bond. Brotherhood forged in places most people will never see and cannot imagine. In that culture, you do not mock a fallen ally. You do not sneer at the dead. It is the lowest thing a human being can do. Trump did it to a standing ovation. If you are a MAGA supporter travelling to NATO countries, understand this. There are no friendly pats on the back waiting for you. No one will buy you a beer. The governments who share your worldview sit in Minsk, Moscow and Pyongyang. Brutal dictatorships where journalists disappear, elections are theatre and dissent is a medical condition treated in basements. Not London. Not Paris. Not Rome, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Berlin or Ottawa. You have abandoned the open societies, the free press, the rule of law, the places where people actually want to live. You traded the best of civilization for a very small, very dark room. Frankly, it serves you right.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ Gandalv / @Microinteracti1

JD Vance is flying to Budapest like a man who thinks he’s the cavalry. He’s not. He’s the kiss of death. Orbán is already trailing in the polls. The last thing a drowning man needs is an American vice president jumping in beside him five days before the vote. Gandalv / @Microinteracti1

Why is there no intercepter? This is over Tel Aviv, and Israel can’t shoot it down. This is a basic ballistic missile, and the Iron Dome is HELPLESS!

Watch as U.S. President Donald Trump mocks Sir Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron at The White House Easter lunch gathering. Live updates: trib.al/JkX5NX7

Iran has stopped playing defense. More than a month into Operation Epic Fury, the targets have changed. On March 27, a strike on Prince Sultan Air Base destroyed at least one E-3 Sentry AWACS, the aircraft that coordinates everything else in the sky. On April 1, drones hit fuel storage at Kuwait International Airport. The BBC estimated $800 million in infrastructure damage to US bases in the first two weeks alone. The pattern is consistent: find the high-value asset, destroy the high-value asset. Gandalv / @Microinteracti1

Hundreds of U.S. personnel have been killed or injured in the region since the U.S. launched a war on Iran just over a month ago. CENTCOM has sent outdated statements on casualty numbers. interc.pt/4cm5Ua4

@FurkanGozukara Trump is unhinged. His singular priority is to be saved from punishment for child rapes.

Holy shit (sound up).

Terrifying reality check. A retired US top General warns that a ground invasion of Iran will result in massive American casualties. He details how Iranian forces will use asymmetric warfare explosive traps and speed boat swarms to absolutely devastate invading troops.

Massive geopolitical shift. The prominent former President of the Council on Foreign Relations declares we are officially in a post-NATO world. Europe no longer trusts Washington and is turning towards China for stability because of Trump's disastrous war.

Getting really bored of MAGA ranting about "freeloading" Europeans. The US does not spend a trillion dollars "on NATO." It spends it on a vast global military empire, with a mere 3.6% going toward their bases in Europe. Meanwhile us "freeloading" Europeans spend $454 billion on our own defence. The "freeloading" story is and always has been a lie to keep Americans angry and Europeans compliant.

@DanCollins2011 Not many. Russia maybe and even that's teetering. Putin is not happy with the whole Iran thing, plus Trump's attempted blockade of Russian tankers to Cuba. The rest of the world has become tired of Trump's bullly tactics.

This feels like the first war in my lifetime where literally the whole world wants the U.S to lose. Do we have any friends left?