September 30, 2006
NATO! GOOD GAWD Y’ALL, WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?
Nato unable to find Afghanistan reinforcements (Richard Beeston, The Times, September 29th, 2006)
NATO yesterday failed to find any volunteers to contribute 2,500 reinforcements that are needed for combat duty in Afghanistan.After two days of talks in Portoroz, Slovenia, defence ministers from the 26-nation alliance said that nobody had produced the reserve force, first requested by Nato commanders more than three weeks ago.
Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, asked Nato colleagues to “step up to the plate†to help American, British, Canadian and Dutch forces currently engaged in fierce fighting with the Taleban in southern Afghanistan.
“There was no offer of more troops. There were some encouraging signs but it is unlikely anything will be decided until our next meeting in Riga in November,†said a British official at the talks.
Unlike Iraq, Afghanistan is a NATO launched and run war, but except for a small Dutch contingent all the fighting is being done by the usual Anglospheric suspects. The Europeans have shown a marked preference for directing traffic in Kabul and other “nation-building†exercises. Originally conceived as a very specific response to a very specific threat, NATO has morphed into a vague and wispy expression of what little harmony remains between Europe and North America--sort of a UN for democracies--at least in North American eyes. For most of Europe, however, it remains an outfit designed solely to protect them from themselves (Bosnia, come on down!) and a vehicle for containing American foreign policy without spending much on defense. Why do North Americans remain so attached to an alliance that obliges them legally to fight for Latvia or Hungary when the Europeans are perfectly happy to sit back and watch a successful war turn around for lack of muscle?
Perhaps one reason why we are so slow to see things clearly is that an assignment to NATO in Brussels is one of the most pleasant and lucrative boondoggles available to the American and Canadian military and one assumes there is no shortage of lengthy policy analyses touting NATO’s key strategic importance flowing back across the Atlantic.
The U.S. should get out of NATO and send the U.N. HQ to Paris. 60 years of pretending these organizations have purpose really hasn't gotten us anywhere.
NATO has prevented Europe's masculinity from emerging, nay dropping, from it's democratic body. The U.N. exists solely for its own corruption and, of course, jew-hating.
Posted by: Palmcroft at September 30, 2006 5:12 PMOne would think that small countries like Lithuania or Latvia would be all for sending a few thousand troops. After all Lithuania was invaded 3 times in the last hundred years, the last time left about 1/5 of the population dead. One would think that to break that cycle of violence and destruction they would be willing to pay their dues to NATO and help out now with the little stuff, with the knowledge that the Brits and Americans would gaurentee their contiued existance as free peoples at times in the future when the chips really are down.
Posted by: lebeaux at September 30, 2006 6:18 PM