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Italy has only 5,000 troops available. That their military budget was cut by 40 percent two years ago, is reflective of how liberal foreign policy is fundamentally flawed in its assumption that evil people will not do harm to us if we simply talk to them and we can eventually win them over, simply because we lead by an example of social/religious tolerance.
Communication and tolerance are, of course, important. But these naive assumptions, including the societal lack of trust in the self-determination of the individual, led to the reality that Europe is now a sitting duck against a stateless evil like ISIS.
The United States, on the other hand, has until recently always fully appreciated the hostility of the world, and the capacity for evil people to do horrifically evil things, and has hence supported our large, capable military.
In addition to our military forces and state militias, the population of the United States, then as now, is heavily armed with the sort of weapons well suited to military operations. Whatever the advantages of the a stateless entity like ISIS, they are far outnumbered by the unorganized militia of the United States, consisting of every U.S. citizen between 18 and 45, and legally obligated by state laws to fight at the order of the governor in the event of insurrection, invasion, or war.
The Europeans, however, in not permitting individual, law-abiding citizens to bear arms, do not have such an advantage.
The Europeans are weaklings. They're too worried about "multiculturalism", being politically correct, and "not offending Muslims" that they stand by (and even join in) with the cries against Jews, Christians, and White people, and join up or sympathize with these extremists. The only European government that has no tolerance for this bull$hit is Russia.
In fact Italy has just confirmed the acquisition of 90 (not so good) F-35 fighters and the Italian Army can count up to 250,000 men (although they'll never be used together unless an enormous emergency).
Before going with stereotypical judgement I'd strongly suggest you to watch at defence spending and army in Europe.
It's not too hard and it's all written in English.
Seeing as neither you nor the writer are kind enough to prove a citation for that number, I'd like to point out that she at least uses the word "deployable", which is rather a different thing. From what I can make out of that jumble of a text, she's referring to deploying troops in Libya (hence the comments about the Tripoli embassy). Italy's army is built around deploying reinforced brigades internationally, so the number sounds about right. Whatever that has to do with an "invasion" of Italy is anybody's guess.
Then, bizarrely, F-35s come into it. Because, apparently, fifth-generation aircraft are essential when fighting an organization that's mostly using AKs and RPGs. (Vietnam-era A-1 Skyraiders would be as good, if not better. A-10s would be better than both, But I digress...)
The idea of ISIS setting out across the Med in some sort of Quixotic amphibious operation is really goddamn stupid. In fact, I'd love if they were kind enough to deploy in set-piece battle fashion, because that would play to our strengths and their weaknesses. If they are going to start operating across the Med, it would take the form of infiltration and terror attacks, a fighting style that traditional militaries - even those with F-35s - are very bad at countering.
About the writes: "She is a frequent contributor to CNN Traveller, Departures, Discovery, and Grazia." Perhaps the travel stuff is more her area.
I doubt they'll really go for Rome--at least, not anytime soon. It was a figure of speech; they probably meant their real targets are the Christian West.
Uh...Italy is a member of NATO. Even discounting the United States participation, NATO can field over 2 million active duty troops, has thousands of main battle tanks and attack aircraft and spends more than $400 billion per year on defense.
The old saw about "liberal" Europe being unable to defend itself is an outright lie.
Where we to distracted with Isis in Iraq and Syria that "intelligence" didn't see this coming?
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