How to Read a "News" story, Again

The New York Daily News is a left wing paper. Like most of them, they pretend not to be. They give themselves away every time. Just cannot help themselves.

The linked article purports to be a news report on the resignation of our Ambassador to Estonia. The proximate cause of his resignation?

" “For the President to say the EU was ‘set up to take advantage of the United States, to attack our piggy bank,’ or that ‘NATO is as bad as NAFTA’ is not only factually wrong, but proves to me that it’s time to go,” he said in a private Facebook post obtained by Foreign Policy."

Will Mr. Trump never stop insulting our allies? Oh my.

And then there is this,

"A longtime U.S. diplomat announced his resignation as the nation he served worries about what will happen to the alliance that protects it."

Assuming he and the Daily News  understand that the USA is the country he serves, not Estonia, it is awfully strange to refer to NATO as the "alliance that protects us". It does no such thing of course. Only we are capable of defending ourselves and them. Which is why "the nation he served" is not worried at all.

Just another opportunity to take a shot at President Trump.

It is not surprising that the story hides, to the extent possible, that our former Ambassador was appointed by Obama. You are left to calculate which administration would have appointed him "three years ago". Can't imagine why they wouldn't just come right out and tell us. Can you?

The USA pays 22.1% of NATO's budget in "direct contributions", about $529 million dollars a year. The biggest costs, though, are in "indirect contributions".

"NATO describes these as contributions that are made, for example, when “a member volunteers equipment or troops to a military operation and bears the costs of the decision to do so."

All those Joint Exercises and training programs we read about are funded mostly by us because we have, by far, the largest military in the alliance.

All the noise we are making is due to the fact that most of the members are not dedicating the 2% of their GDP they are supposed to. Thus their Armed Forces are smaller than they would otherwise be, forcing the USA to make ever larger "indirect contributions" to keep NATO properly prepared.

We are, as usual, being taken advantage of. It should stop. We are not the primary beneficiaries of NATO's defense umbrella. The people not living up to their obligations are.