NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte on Sunday offered a full-throated endorsement of Donald Trump’s military efforts against Iran and also said he expects the nations of NATO to come together to support Trump.
Rutte has consistently been supportive of Trump even as some of the leading European powers — noting that NATO is intended to be a defensive alliance — have expressed reluctance to help Trump with the Iran war, including with U.S. efforts to make the Strait of Hormuz safe for the passage of oil tankers.
Trump, for his part, has lashed out at NATO. “Without the U.S.A., NATO IS A PAPER TIGER! They didn’t want to join the fight to stop a Nuclear Powered Iran,” he wrote on Truth Social on Friday. “Now that fight is Militarily WON, with very little danger for them, they complain about the high oil prices they are forced to pay, but don’t want to help open the Strait of Hormuz, a simple military maneuver that is the single reason for the high oil prices. So easy for them to do, with so little risk. COWARDS, and we will REMEMBER!”
Mostly stuff relating to Ukraine. Though I do have some complaints about him with that as well. But on the whole he’s handled Ukraine related things agreeable.
I don’t speak Dutch so I’ll skip, I’ll take your word for it. I don’t respect him at all anymore, so there’s really not much to gain to go through translating that stuff.
It can be boiled down to:
I have despised Rutte ever since that. And I was very disappointed in many Dutch people who seemed to shrug that off with “it’s a thing we say in Dutch - when someone acts annoying on a party, we also say that”. Yeah, no shit Sherlock. A party guest has a place to go to - their home. WHERE THE FUCK DO YOU EXPECT PEOPLE TO GO WHO WERE BORN HERE? Or who fled from war?
It was a “lowest of the low” moments of Dutch racism. I have lived there for a couple of years, and I went in with positive prejudice, and left bitterly disappointed - the under-40 Dutch people in the cities are alright, but the older generation and those in the smaller villages were way more intolerant and way more racist that I was prepared for. And me being cis-caucasian, I heard all the shit-talk about foreigners because they thought they could speak freely around me.