It looks as if the NATO allies are exhausted, disinterested, irritated, and recalcitrant about escalating their role in Afghanistan. The Administration has tried cajoling, browbeating, sending angry letters, and even insulting our allies, but nothing seems to convince them to put their militiaries at the disposal of the U.S.
John McCain, however, thinks he can persuade Europe with a little "straight talk". Apparently "straight talk" is the same thing as what the Administration has already tried, only now it's McCain trying it, so for some reason it's supposed to work.
Surely, behind the scenes there is some ugly threatening going on. This makes the NATO allies' reluctance all the more surprising. The NATO alliance really only exists as a deterrent to Russian aggression, and with the U.S. tying up the bulk of its military in a pointless and intractable occupation of Iraq there is no obvious need for Europe to cater to Bush's whims any longer. Sadly, Bush has let a few thousand Al-Qaeda bankrupt us and render our military irrelevant on the world stage. Bring 'em on, indeed.
Thus far, Spain alone has spent $890 million on a campaign that was supposed to be quick, primarily involving reconstruction...and ostensibly a "peacekeeping" mission. Spain can't put these costs on the Chinese credit card that Bush uses; it's real money that has to come from somewhere. Over 7000 Spanish troops have rotated through the wonderland of Afghanistan, where, golly gosh, girls are going to school now. And working in the opium fields after school, but let's not mention that.
story from Xinhua
Spain not to dispatch more troops to Afghanistan
Spanish Defence Minister Jose Antonio Alonso said on Thursday that his country would maintain the size of its peacekeeping force in Afghanistan and would not send more troops there.
Alonso told a press conference that he had reaffirmed the Spanish government's stance on the issue at talks with NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer on Thursday morning.
He said the 690 troops Spain currently has stationed in Afghanistan was sufficient to help fulfil the peacekeeping and reconstruction mission, and it was not necessary to send more troops there.
The minister added that Spain would be in charge of the training for two battalions of Afghanistan's national defense force and would send four unmanned planes and more instructors to help the Afghan army.
Since Spain participated in the peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan in January 2002 it has spent a total of 685 million euros (890 million U.S. dollars) on the mission and deployed 7,247 soldiers in 15 batches.
In a bid to bolster an offensive against the Taliban strongholds, NATO on Thursday called for more troops contribution to the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, a call resisted by several European allies.
Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero affirmed last week that his country would not send any more troops to Afghanistan.
Source: Xinhua
4 comments:
todd
I don't know if you saw this yet but Russia is right on and the rest of the world is catching on that Bush has been using them all to follow his hidden agenda. I discussed it today but check this out. Munich Conference on Security Policy
I heard them bragging today that they believe NATO members are going to come through in Afghanistan. I don't know how I feel about it? I don't know if they should pull Bush's nuts out of the fire but their is us and my sons are in this to.
For all of my bitching about Afghanistan, I really do support the idea of keeping the Taliban out of there and rebuilding the country.
Bush, however (and apparently now McCain) are so completely off-base and arrogant that I don't think they will ever succeed - and will most likely make things much worse than they are now.
My top four complaints:
- Believing that NATO is our military reserves, and behaving towards our allies as if we own them, that they simply must follow our dictates, and ignoring these countries' internal pressures.
- Fighting an insurgency as a conventional war. That's how the British lost the American colonies.
- Wasteful reconstruction efforts that focus exclusively on huge, unrealistic projects that never get off the ground, and a reconstruction bureaucracy that moves at a glacial pace until projects are no longer feasible.
- Yet another national military that is inept, corrupt, thoroughly infiltrated, and perpetually in training. Nothing is expected of them and they never fail to meet those expectations. It's the South Vietnamese Army all over again. If the Afghans don't care or won't fight, we've already lost.
There are, of course more. For example, Iran was our greatest ally in the early going. They fought a low-intensity border war for years, cutting the supply lines and the opium trade the Taliban depended on. They really don't like the Taliban, but Bush had to make Iran the "bad guys", and all of that help just vanished. We gave Pakistan $10 billion to fight the Taliban, but they spent it on stuff to fight a war with India instead, and they bought that stuff from us - we never even looked at the purchases. That also put India out of the running to help us out as well.
And even if everything had gone Bush's way, it's pretty clear that Afghanistan would simply have been turned into an American military base against Russia and we would have just as many troops there as we have now.
An extra 1000 NATO troops won't make any difference, even if they do scrounge them up. The whole approach is fundamentally and fatally flawed.
We will not win in Afrghanistan or anywhere else and Bush guaranteed that when he attacked Iraq to get into the middle east.
100,000 troops will do nothing to change that. It will take much more to alter this course and like it or not it will take a united concerted effort like most American's are not aware or capable of.
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