Being "brave" is neither a military nor a foreign policy. It is macho bullshit.

"The American ambassador to Kabul has accused European members of Nato of jeopardising the future of the alliance by refusing to send troops to Afghanistan, or banning their forces from entering areas with heavy fighting." writes the British Telegraph

He got me some pictures of himself there, and there are a few on which he is chatting with some Taliban (there is a status quo of sorts between the Nato troops, which he was part of, and the Taliban - in Herat that is, not in Kandahar where it's hell). He even embraces some leader of sorts on one picture.

Well, he told me that he had met some high-ranking official (police head or something) who was blown to bits last week, and that this incident got him brooding and feeling melancholic/down. Not because of who the guy was (he barely knew him), but because he is a firm admirer of Afghan culture, poetry, history and sees no way out to the mess over there. And this got him to come up with the following tirade, which I find hard and real:

"It's better to be dead than to be an Afghan".

He also said that for him it was very painful to know that this was a country that he would never be able to live in. He can only be sent back as a soldier, and he says that's also quite hard for him because he thinks Nato shouldn't be there in the first place.

How come we took the right to invade a country and kill people there ? Who are we to decide that ?

I frankly do not cry when soldiers are killed by Afghan patriots, we should withdraw asap and say sorry. Knowing that soldiers are killing in my name is shameful.

This war on Terra looks really like a war against Islam (you do not like the Afghan Islam, but is not our business) and thus Djiad is getting more justified every day.

It should be write down in the Constitution (why not European constitution) that our army cannot operate overseas and invade countries.

Defense yes, other bullshit, NO. it s always highly counterproductive.

The US creates the mess and expects the rest of the world to mop up after it, with some guilt trip about past help, or claims that "it´s for the good of the world".

Throwing more arms, more troops and more money at a quagmire, is not problem-solving, it is "escalation of conflict".


Our knowledge has surpassed our wisdom. --Charu Saxena.

Europe is the biggest consumer of drugs from Afghanistan, i.e. Europe fuels the fighting and is responsible for the suffering.

Since most European lawmakers are against legalization, there is not choice, but to send more troops to Afghanistan or is there?

http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2006/9/30/22618/4754

I think Afhanistan was 'lost' not now but at the end of 2001. The problems in Afghanistan bear some similarity to both those in Iraq and those in Kosovo.

To put it simply, there was never a serious attempt of building a country, but a series of alibi measures shrouding an ugly reality, and in this European governments share culpability with the US not as potemkin armies (as in Iraq) but active participants, even if as vassals.

In a little more detail -- and everything I write was reported, but somehow didn't became the basis for the 'big picture' in the media --: the 2001 US invasion wasn't a real invasion, it was a disproportionate bombing campaign that made the Taleban withdraw from main cities, but it wasn't destroyed, while a loosely controlled band of US-allied warlords took over real power. The Western forces that were sent in were too few in number from the start even just to take effective control, not to mention build something. Their operation partly resembled that in Kosovo: US forces with heavy guns operating rather independently, in this case not just cooperating with the local warlords but using much firepower, while the Europeans would cruise up and down streets in some cities or stay in barracks, and overseeing some reconstruction projects and abandoning the area once finished: overall, not doing much in most of the country.

Meanwhile, the potemkin 'democratisation' began. Due to the warlords and general insecurity, there was no chance of any political base self-orgnisation beyond the influence of the occupier-approved warlords and people around the US-endorsed Karzai. The Loja Jirga was criticised as sham even by participants. The elections weren't any better, but Europe sent in OSCE to declare the overall fairness of the elections without venturing out of Kabul. The warlords weren't much more progressive than the Taliban (the since deposed warlord of Herat for example reintroduced religious police), while they didn't kept much discipline and thus acts of common crime by their soldiers made civilians including rape-threatened women feel even worse off than under the Taleban. And if a reconstruction project built something, it didn't got the defense against acts of terror from the Taliban or others. Meanwhile the warlords, not the Taliban, ran up drug production under the watchful eyes of their Western allies. The Taliban itself was bidding its time, and watched Iraq for tactics and strategy to copy.

All our governments were in denial, years ago. All our governments weren't really committed for anything beyond appearance. And our media (not the US, our), which reported this or that officers' complaints about the senselessness of this or that politically-motivated deployment inside Afganistan, or published reports from road trips, never added up 2+2 but on the long run accepted the governments' media narrative for past events.

As metavision rightly remarked, what sending more troops now achieves is escalation, not creating stability. This is not hypothetical, this is already happening: recently we read about British 'peacekeepers' screwing up counter-insurgency by repeating every error of the heavyhanded Americans (in Iraq as well as Afghanistan), and illustrating that, an account of constant heavy battles faced by British troops who just aren't in control.

There is similarity to the hopelessness of the Iraq situation inasmuch as there just aren't enough troops (think of 500,000 not 50,000), and rightly trained troops (ones, re Alex, having a clue about locals and not reaching for a gun or hiding behind their armour as first reaction), and governments' willingness to sacrifice lives (own soldiers' lives) to do what wasn't done five years ago.

What may be somewhat different from Iraq is that the US's unilateralism is less important (given lesser troop numbers, lesser strategic interests and lesser connection to national pride) while a number of European governments (including Spain, Italy and Germany) have made the political point of there being a qualitative difference between the Iraq and Afghanistan adventures, and claiming that they are committed to the latter -- which they did so quite independently of Cheney and others' attempts to get Europeans to share their quagmires so that (they hoped) a 'support your troops' attitude builds and captures European publics (something the ambassadors' commnts in the article you quote are really about -- and something a US senator said quite explicitely in the run-up of the Iraq war, it was shown several times on German TV).

So to conclude, Europe and the USA are losing Afghanistan, and because this was built on a long-running deep hypocrisy, there is no realistic change to save the situation. A fuckup (and IMO fuckup No. I, Iraq is only No. II). European governments blocking an extension only cover up for the previous hypocrisy.

*Traitor*, n.
A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.

I mean, if Europe doesn't fight and die and lose money in Aghanistan, how can America be expected to keep fighting and dying and losing money in Iraq.

Come on, NATO allies. I thought we were a team, here. :)

Have Keyboard. Will Travel. :)

When all that is done, everybody should be happy...except the Arabs, obviously, because they'll have no money, but that's their problem.

Where's your motherf*%&ing flag pin?

What I find "scary" "creepy" is that here in the US we are not getting good world news.  I know where to find alternate news--I really appreciate this site.  However, a lot of people don't know they are being fed propaganda.  I've only recently realized how bad much of the mainstream media is.  

If my option existed it would probably look like this:
"Euros go home! Support the troops, bring them home!"

There is right now a feudal war going on and it probably wont stop until one warlord or one warlords party has won decisively over the others. Since you can not bomb forth peace there is not much european troops can do. Of course, there are all those other things, diplomatic and policy things. Like not supporting dictatorships in general, regulating small arms trading, looking at ways to avoid supporting the economy that fuels the warlords. And so on and so forth.

But troops wage war not peace, and EU troops will not bring peace to Afghanistan.