Not to be disrespectful, but your country devastated Europe in World War II. The collapse of the traditional powers and the reaming you gave Eastern Europe contributed greatly to the rise of communism.

Well, if we're going to start playing the GUILT GAME, then I suppose it's fair to start talking about all the dictatorships the US set up and supported throughout the world over the last 80 years, or the left wing, democratically elected governments that said dicatorships sometimes replaced.

Europe was rebuilt with large contributions from America.

Yes, the Mashall Plan. We know. It was in the form of both grants and loans, much of it was spent on American goods, and obviously the loans had to be paid back. The primary goal of the Marshall plan was to prevent the spread of Communism throughout Europe, but the way many Americans talk about it, you would have thought it was humanitarian aid.

The satellite wars fought in Vietnam, Korea, and elsewhere were not fought in Europe in large part because the U.S. planted its troops in your country and said it would defend it as your own.

Which, of course, also removed the option for Western Europe to be neutral in the conflict between the Soviet Union and the US. Placing US nuclear assets on European soil gave you a rapid strike capability without risk of losing any of your own cities, and so made Western Europe a target for Soviet nuclear attack rather than simply convensional invasion.

Three generations of Germans grew up without fear of invasion, starvation, or lack of Economic opportunity in large part because of the stability the U.S. has enforced.

Okay, you weren't doing too badly up to here, but this pure Republican party horseshit. I grew up in West Germany during the cold war, in military quarters. Everyone lived in fear of when "the bomb dropped", because there was very little chance of surviving if things kicked off between the US and the USSR. My Dad was in Intelligence, and as I got older we talked a lot about what was going on. Here is what was going on:

In the event of a Soviet invasion the British and Germans, and other NATO forces, were expected to make a "last stand" against Soviet forces. No one was under any illusion that this would result in anything other than obliteration for NATO forces in West Germany, but they would hopefully delay the Soviet onslaught enough, and cause enough damage, so that the US reinforcements being rushed over the Atlantic would mostly be doing a mopping up job when they arrived. Collatoral damage (thats "civilian casualties" to normal people) were expected to be massive. If it looked like the tide was turning against NATO and the Soviets were going to take take Western Europe, you know what the American plan was? Nuke the whole of Western Europe to prevent its industrial base from falling into Soviet hands. That's right, good old Uncle Sam was planning to kill every last one of us if it looked like we were going to end up as part of the Soviet Union. Peronally, I'd rather be alive in a communist state than dead in a nuclear wasteland.

Far from "protecting" us, the US viewed Europe an expendable pawn in it's global struggle with the Soviet Union.

Lets not forget its neo-liberalism which has so vigorously been forced as the status quo by the U.S. and which Germany owes much of its economic success to.

I think this is untrue, and so, I think, would the average German. We are debating this in the UK at the moment. Most of Germanys success has been as the result the rejection of neo-liberalism, or at least the way it has been implemented in the US. For example, Unions are strong organisations in Germany, and legal requirements for companies to have Union representation on boards, and further requirements for worker consultations for large scale business changes, have prevented the manufacturing offshoring that has occurred both in the United States and the UK. Such legal requirements would be looked upon with horror in the US, and labelled "socialism", but they have contributed to higher employment, lower weekly working hours, and a generally higher level of affluence.

Don't get me wrong, America is by no means perfect. The U.S. has done a lot of messed up things and has gone astray this past decade, but this is about more than the now. This is about history and posterity. Germany has had much benefit from its relationship with the U.S. It will also, in my opinion, benefit both countries into the future by remaining close allies.

No, what this is about is the United States wanting bases in Europe for the benefit of force projection into the Middle East. Personally, the linked article above is all noise, no one in the US government will voluntarily close bases on European soil for the forseeable future. If anything, it will be Europeans asking the US troops to leave that finally closes the bases.

You may think Russia is not a threat, but they still have enough nuclear weapons to wipe out the world.

So does the United States. Given that logic, we should be as fearful of the US as we are of Russia.

They are still militarily powerful enough that, if they were inclined to and the US was inclined to allow them, fight virtually any country outside of the U.S. and China and win.

No, they really couldn't. If they mobilised on Europes eastern borders they would be in for a very nasty shock indeed. A high proportion of the European population has seen compulsory military service, and even if the Russians won, at the very least they would see an insurgency that would make the US experience in Iraq look like a walk in the park. No one has ever managed to conquer the whole of continental Europe. Ever. The most professional armies the world has ever seen have tried, and failed. I see no reason to think that a half-assed bunch of Russian conscripts could manage it, or hold Europe even if they could. And what would be the point of such a war? What would be the goal? It simply doesn't make sense. This is archaic, cold war thinking you are applying here.

Does Germany clash with Russia? Sometimes, although rarely directly. What about the EU? I think it is more than a little idealistic to think war and conflict remains in the past.

Even if the US bailed completely, I see no reason to beleive that that Europe as a whole is in danger of invasion or conquest from anyone.