[Skybird]

Since somebody recently asked me in another thread by whom Germany should feel threatened so that it should maintain military strength.

CNN recently reported that several strikes against IS camps and personell carried out in Libya by the US Air Force, were run due to attempts of targetting and killing contact persons of the Syrian assassin who murdered several people on the christmas market in Berlin 2016.

I have to wonder. The terror attack was carried out on German soil, in a German city, during a German festivity, killing German citizens and injuring, mutilating, traumatising German citizens - subjects which to protect from such dangers is a mandatory constitutional duty of the German state. Why is it then that it needs American platforms firing American ordinance and putting American crews at risk in retaliation for this anti-German attack, when in fact it should have been German military capacities reaching out and retaliating for the terror attack from Berlin? Isn'T Germany seen as one of the leading, most wealthy nations on Earth? Why do we not maintain a more potential military? Just this third world aid and development unit that it currently is?

A classic joke from the cold war era: whats the role of the west-German Bundeswehr in case the Sovjets suddenly attack? To regulate traffic and keep the Autobahn free for the real armies (US, UK) arriving as relief forces.