Toronto Sun: Europeans see what Americans cannot

[marmar]

By ERIC MARGOLIS, TORONTO SUN


At this week's NATO conference in Vilnius, Lithuania, an angry U.S. Secretary of Defence Robert Gates accused some Europeans of not being prepared to "fight and die" in Afghanistan in the battle against the Taliban.

The undiplomatic Gates is quite right. Most Europeans regard the Afghan conflict as a. wrong and immoral; b. America's war; c. all about oil; or d. 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.

Canada's calls for 1,000 more NATO troops, and the U.S. decision to send 3,200 marines, will not alter the course of this war, which is turning increasingly against the western occupiers. In fact, the war is spreading into neighbouring Pakistan, a nation of 165 million, stretching U.S. and NATO forces ever thinner.

A primary reason for Gates' recent call for U.S. troops to begin attacking pro-Taliban Pashtun tribesmen inside Pakistan is due to their growing attacks on allied supply lines to Afghanistan. ........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.torontosun.com/News/Columnists/Margolis_Eric/2008/02/10/4838323-sun.php

[Dave From Canada]

1. I disagree with the notion that the Afghan conflict is immoral and/or part of Bush's war in the

Muslim world. The Afghan conflict is not the Iraq conflict. Al Qaeda was actually in Afghanistan. Afghanistan had a government that was actually a sponsor of terrorism and supporting Al Qaeda. I think blurring the two wars as one is intellectually dishonest.

[Demeter]

10. While All That Is True--Bush Has Subverted The Effort

Bush's war is nothing like advertised. It is all the choices Europeans listed in the post.

Bush has a happy facility for taking a a crucial situation in a vital area, and destroying the goal and the land and the people, leaving poisoned desolation behind, accomplishing nothing but waste at home and abroad.

[AlphaCentauri]

11. The ocupation maybe the problem not the war on terrorist n/t

[Olney Blue]

2. Yo- commander-in-chief: now what?

[AlertLurker]

3. USAmericans tend to forget that the rest of the world remembers...

who started the war, and WHY. The rest of us KNOW it had nothing to do with 9-11, US National Security or Islamic Terrorism.

USAmericans tend to forget that the rest of the world remembers that the Taliban offered to turn ObL over to the USA TWICE and was refused by Bush.

USAmericans tend to forget that the rest of the world remembers that the Afghanistan Campaign was prepared months in advance of 9-11.

USAmericans, unfortunately have an MSM that reminds them CONSTANTLY of "the Iraq/Afghan/9-11" connection, the "fact" that no one warned the USA about 9-11/Al-Qaeda, that Islam is simply a violent, repressive and evil form of fascism and that the Good Ol' USA is incapable of being wrong.


I believe that Canada's call for 1000 more troops may be just a smokescreen (at least I hope) in oder to withdraw support from this disastrous policy of illegal and immoral war for profit/oil/LNG.

Dave - I understand your viewpoint, but I believe that you are profoundly wrong. NATO is in Afganistan to protect US interests/safeguard and control Caspian OIL and LNG, period. Nobody gave two shits about Afghanistan until the Taliban refused the Unocal/US State Dep't "Carpet of God" offer...We're just so SICK of the LYING BULLSHIT and the slow BLEED of our fighting men and women. After Somalia, Rwanda and Haiti, we should apparently be used to getting pulled into this GARBAGE...but we are obviously NOT.

It's going to trigger (along with a bloated Conservative budget crisis and really stupid Conservative crime bill) another Canadian federal election, and I do not believe that it will be good news for the Harper Conservatives...

VOTE NDP!

[marmar]

4. USAmericans? .... I like that....How did the U.S. get to claim the term "American?" ......

.... when technically anyone in the Americas is an American....Ours is a very narcissistic nation!!!! :)

[AlertLurker]

5. Correct - technically anyone in the Americas is an "American"

That's why I use USAmerican to describe those living in "The States" as we call them. How's THAT for a little bit of Canadian arrogance? Have you ever heard USAmericans referring to us, north of the border, as "the Provinces???"

However:

Can you guess the reason that NO ONE ELSE on the continent lays claim to the term "American?"



HINT: It's the same reason that I see more and more USAmericans abroad with little Canadian flags on their luggage...

[Kermitt Gribble]

6. USAmericans..

that is a great term. I'm going to have to start using that - if you don't mind. I've always wondered the same thing - why everyone on the North and South American continents weren't called "Americans".

[Igel]

8. Usage.

Which is the way most words get their meanings.

Strictly speaking, Bush, Bill Gates, and Dobson are part of "the people"; however among some sub-groups of the US population "the people" excludes them. "Power to the people" seldom is intended to include * as a recipient of "people power".

Similarly, I knew some descendents of Africans. Her mother was born in South Africa, as were her maternal grandparents and great-grandparents. Yet nobody would dream of calling the blonde, blue-eyed women "African-Americans". Berber-Americans also tend to miss out on the appelation. The Egyptian-American security clerk in the dorm got into a bit of a row when I was on desk duty over some terms. He said he was as "African-American" as the black guy he was talking to (a security guy on patrol), the black guy claimed he was Middle Eastern, just like the woman waiting for a friend to show up--she was of Armenian descent, but her family had lived in Lebanon for several generations. The Armenian woman said she wasn't Middle Eastern, her fluent Levantine Arabic notwithstanding. She was Caucasian; somebody pointed out that this meant she was like me, and she said no--I'm Irish-American.

But "technically" the Armenian woman was Middle Eastern, and the Egyptian was more "African" than the African-American. "Caucasian" is usually reserved these days for people like Abkhazians and Georgians, not Armenians, although there's the racial meaning (for those that accept the idea of race) which makes the Egyptia, alas, also Caucasian. Personally, since I'm Celtic, I prefer to think of myself as a descendent of the first wave of Indo-European-speaking Central Asians to have reached Europe--a ground-breaking Asian. But it doesn't mean I'm likely to select "Asian American", any more than the typical Turk could (note, of course, that Israelis are also Asians).

One has to pay attention to usage. People power works nowhere as in language, to the chagrin of prescriptivists, purists, and those that decide to lean on the thin reed of etymology.

[dantyrant]

9. Come now AL...

You're forgetting the heroin silk road traffic, all directed through US banks. That money's very useful in times like these when liquidity is so tight.

[AlertLurker]

12. Not ALL directed through US banks...

You'd be surprised (or probably not, actually) by the amount of heroin/opium $$$ being laundered by European, Russian and Asian financial institutions, as well...

Strange that no one, besides the Taliban, wanted to STOP this (in the name of Islam) traffic...

Stranger still is the fact that NATO has stopped ALL interdiction actions in Southern Afghanistan in 2007...

Given the nature of the conflict since 2001, it becomes easier and easier to demonize the West (and NATO nations, in particular) the longer it continues...

[dantyrant]

15. you're clearly more current than I on such things!

Been flying secret C130 flights for Harper? :)

Your point is well-taken; the CIA directs a cut towards US banks. BCCI is still running, somehow. But our 'networks' also do bring the drugs through Turkey into the Balkans as a jumping-off point to Europe. And now there's the new flow of opium through Iraq, undoubtedly a war crime(removing all economic tariffs so local produce couldn't compete forcing farmers to produce opium to put food on the table.) What explicitly are you suggesting is afoot in S. Afghanistan? And to what extent was the Burma siege tied up in drugs, if you happen to know?

Dan Rather reported on his HDNET show that the Taliban had been destroying opium so that they could wield greater leverage over the price of opium, presumably in a similar way to how oil powers can destabilize markets by toying with the spigot. It's an intriguing hypothesis, but it's not at all clear it's true. The Taliban maintained connections with the ISI who are, as you know, the interface through which the CIA operates in the region.

[Joanne98]

7. They should just kick us out of NATO.

[IndianaGreen]

13. Endless war will serve the elites fine

And since the two major parties represent different factions of the ruling class, we are guaranteed war way beyond our lifetimes, and that of our children.

I applaud the Europeans for their resistance to have their citizens being used as cannon fodder for the US.

NATO should be abolished!

[Diclotican]

14. marmar

marmar

First you call NATO, well the "old NATO" Before the admittance of Poland and other former Warsaw-pact nations for irrelevant, because we was not into the bandwagon policy about Iraq..

And now the US are in dear need of military forces to just get by in Afghanistan. And now Mr Gates almost demand that Europe have to send more and more troops to Afghanistan, because US can not alone get it true and fight the extremist in Taliban and Al Qauda?

How rude it is, to wake up to reality and se that if you insult your friends and allied then it is not THAT easy anymore to get the alliance to bear more burden when it come to war in Afghanistan.. I might insult someone here now. But USA have it coming when mr Rumsfeld was arrogant enough to say that NATO, or the Old Europe was irrelevant to United States anymore.. The Right wingers of the world was very happy about it, and pounded europe with insults, at mounts end..

Now US are really in the problems in Afghanistan, where US are the biggest military forces, close after is US, and then the rest in different number... But as long as Mr Bush jr are in power, US can not expect that Europe, aka the old Europe want to send troops to a war with no chance of winning.. Maybe after Mr Bush are out of office, and then some time to recoup what is lost in trust, europe "_may" get into the war or into a political solution in Afghanistan...

As you pointed out. Soviet had more than 160.000 soldiers in Afghanistan, and the backing of more than 200.000 afghan troops, and even then they was fighting a force with no more than AK47 machine gun in their hand. And Soviet was beated big time in Afghanistan, and it was a demoralized Red Army who was going back to Soviet territory in 1988.. Some say that the Red Army still recoil from the Afghan war:shrug:

US and "allied forces" have less than 70.000 soldiers, in a area where soviet had more than 160.000 soldiers.. Not exactly the best way to et peace a chance in Afghanistan.. And the taliban who are mostly a Pastun case, have a lot more supports in the civil population then the current american administration want to admit public...

The war in Afghanistan is a US war. But it failed horrible when it stop-ed short in it tracks, and wanted to go to Iraq instead of cleaning up and rebuild Afghanistan. And I am not surprised that many country in Europe don't want to be part of that..Not after the arrogance mr Bush and Co have treated Europe with...

You don't insult your friends, and then tell them to come and help them after do you?

Diclotican

Sorry my bad English, not my native language