McManus is an ignoramus or he is dishonest.
[quote]Afghanistan is immensely distant from what has always been known as the North Atlantic region. Yet forces from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) are now conducting the military operations in that country. This situation came about because NATO is a United Nations subsidiary and is, once again, being employed as the UN’s military arm.[/quote]
WRONG. NATO is engaged in Afghanistan because a NATO member was attacked by a terrorist organization harbored by Afghanistan’s Taliban regime. That is totally within the NATO charter. That was the whole purpose of the alliance.
Apparently it's to simple for the author to understand.
That's true, but I also think it's more of a formality than anything else -- since NATO has also been used in ways that have nothing to do with the mutual defense of its member nations. I've always viewed NATO as little more than a legal/diplomatic mechanism under which the U.S. has basically been given carte blanche to conduct a benign military occupation of Europe for its own interests. There's nothing wrong with that, but it makes no sense to pretend NATO is something other than what it really is.
Which begs the question, why are we in this alliance, when most of the other members failed to adhere to the spirit or letter of their treaty obligations.
Seems this alliance, like a lot of the deals we have with other countries, is a one-way burden.
And NATO is in Kosovo because?