> American armed forces and weapons (and our tax dollars and political system) are what protect all of you from annihilation. While this sounds like something

> American armed forces and weapons (and our tax dollars and political system) are what protect all of you from annihilation. While this sounds like something Otto said in A Fish Called Wanda, I can assure Europeans that many Americans actually believe what he is saying. Of course we can look at the history of the US in Europe. Operation Gladio ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio ) was established to start a guerrilla war in Italy or France if the parties elected were not aligned with the rulers of the US (the US barely tolerated De Gaulle). The US intervention in Italian politics in 1948 exceeded Russian meddling in Czechoslovakia that year. The CIA spied on and stole Airbus plans for US business and does this regularly for other industries. And not to forget spying on Merkel's phone calls and all of this...as the US assistant secretary of state Victoria Nuland famously said in 2014 "fuck the EU". Also, someone would have to be naive to think the US is acting in the current situation out of enormous benevolence to the Ukraine. It is, among other things, working on accomplishing what it wants to achieve for its own benefit in western Europe.