by Vigilante
Mon Feb 18th, 2008 at 11:27:25 AM EST
Here is an unusually frank and disturbing opinion from Eric Margolis of the Edmonton Sun,
Europeans See What America Cannot. I am presenting it because it contains some points which I have projected to be held by many Frenchmen and Germans. I have felt that I have not encountered this opinion, because - like too many Americans - I am monolingual and do not travel.
Diary rescue by Migeru
In any event, here is what Margolis says, in part:
The undiplomatic Gates is quite right. Most Europeans regard the Afghan conflict as
- wrong and immoral;
- America's war;
- all about oil;
- probably lost.
To many Europeans, the NATO alliance was created to deter the real threat of Soviet aggression, not to supply foot soldiers for George Bush's wars in the Muslim world.
While Gates and the Harper government were pleading for more troops, the commander of the 40,000 NATO troops in Afghanistan, U.S. Gen. Dan McNeill, landed a bombshell. If proper U.S. military counter-insurgency doctrine were followed, McNeill admitted, the U.S. and NATO would need 400,000 troops to defeat Pashtun tribal resistance in Afghanistan.
When the Soviets occupied Afghanistan, they deployed 160,000 troops and about 200,000 Afghan Communist troops -- yet failed to crush the mostly Pashtun resistance. Now, the U.S. and NATO are trying the same mission with only 66,000 troops, backed by local mercenaries grandly styled the Afghan National Army.
(...)
If impassioned claims by U.S. and Canadian politicians that the little Afghanistan war must by won at all costs, then why don't they stop orating, impose conscription, and send 400,000 soldiers, including their own sons, to fight in Afghanistan?
Of course they won't. They prefer to waste their own soldiers, and grind up Afghanistan, rather than admit this war against 40 million Pashtun tribesmen was a terrible mistake that will only get worse.
I personally feel that post 9-11 invasion and reconstruction of Afghanistan was warranted, if not mandated by the NATO charter. However, Bush's detour, away from the effort to capture Osama bin Laden ('dead or alive'), into Iraq, fatally flawed this Afghanistan mission.
I'm sure that NATO's "1st Tier" original members never envisaged that the alliance would
- come to the armed defense of one member who was attacked by a non-member
- be tolerant of that besieged member capriciously launching an invasion against another country not previously involved
- continue its effort in behalf of its original member who had been attacked, despite that member's expending the preponderant amount of its own resources on its elective invasion and occupation of the third country.
The situation, as I see it, is that NATO has been assigned to pulling our chestnuts (Osama bin Laden, Mullah Omar, etc.), out of the fire in Afghanistan while we Americans are blowing our assets and resources, extinguishing fires we have needlessly set in Iraq.
What loyal friends we, Americans, have in NATO! Whatever can we do to keep them?
