NATO, what is the point?

Isn't the point of NATO that we don't have to have soldiers "protecting" every square km of the country. Isn't that why we are in Afghanistan, on the other side of the freaking world? To defend our NATO allies (in this case the USA, that was attacked by a dozen local residents, none from Afghanistan).

Now, in addition to being in Afghanistan, we are spending hundreds of millions of dollars "defending" the Artic against potentially greedy NATO members... By the way, these are dollars that we could be spending making the CBC commercial free (like the BBC is in the UK) or covering the price of pharmaceuticals (as is the case in most of Europe), or having one of the lowest income tax rates in the developed world (as is the case in the USA).

We could also be more generous with foreign aid (like our allies the Danes), helping democratic countries, that often spend very little defending themselves against imaginary enemies, develop. But nooooo. Instead, we are spending all that money defending the frozen north (only in the Summer; in the Winter the place defends itself) against potential invaders (Europeans and Americans) who might use our waters to gain quicker access to communist China.

Am I missing something here?

Could we at least build a road or train track so we can get there before they do? In case someone does invade us, I'm not sure sending our ships via Saint-Pière and Miquelon (France) Greenland (Denmark) and Alaska (USA) is the best idea. Because folks, even if we build fort knox up there, the frozen soldiers, Inuit or not, will need supplies.

And no, Canada does not have any way of transporting equipment to the north, in the Summer, other than by the air or water. So in that sense, Afghanistan is practice!

Hey, I'm all for supporting democracy. But spending money to get it in Afghanistan seems rather odd since we seem to be supporting communist China on a daily basis thanks to our addiction to dirt cheap labour. China, by the way, is an ally of the military government of Myanmar (aka Burma), a government that thinks it is OK to shoot unarmed monks (and why shouldn't China be an ally, they've shot monks themselves in the past.

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Update: September 29th. Post corrected to reflect the fact that Sweden is not part of NATO (with Finland and Ireland, the only EU countries not part of NATO)
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My previous rants againts NATO:

-"Does Gerard Kennedy Support NATO?"
-"If I Ran Canada"

Others on the subject:
-Could "Cold War" be being redefined as I type?
-canada out of afghanistan