said the refusal of nearly a dozen military allies to participate in
the trans-Atlantic alliance's training mission in Iraq (news - web sites) was "disturbing."
Posted on 11/23/2004 8:07:23 PM PST by crushelits
WASHINGTON (AFP) - US General James Jones, NATO (news - web sites)'s supreme allied commander,
said the refusal of nearly a dozen military allies to participate in the trans-Atlantic alliance's training mission
in Iraq (news - web sites) was "disturbing."
"It is important to recognize that once the alliance gets involved in an operation, it is important that all allies support the operation," Jones said in remarks during a luncheon here.
"With ... nine or 10 or 11 countries in the alliance who will not send forces into Iraq to participate in the mission, the burden falls then on the remaining 15 or 16 nations or 14 nations to shoulder that burden," he said.
"This is disturbing," the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's top military officer said.
"I hope it is a one-time event, because it really will be a limiting factor in the long term in terms of generating forces and successive rotations."
Last week in Brussels NATO ambassadors adopted an "operation plan" for an Iraq mission foreseeing the dispatch of 200 to 300 military instructors to the embattled country under heavy guard to train about 1,000 Iraqi officers a year.
For some NATO allies to vote for a mission but then refuse to participate in it "makes it difficult for the operational commanders to be successful," Jones said.
At a news conference, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld described the situation as a "problem."
"It's kind of like if you've got a basketball team and you have five people train together, week after week after week, it comes to be game time, and two of them stick up their hands and say, 'Gee, I don't think I'm going to play this week,'" Rumsfeld said.
"It would be better if they were on the bench and somebody else had been training for the last period of weeks," he said.
Senior US officials said Friday Washington was growing increasingly frustrated with the refusal of five NATO members, particularly Germany, to allow their military officers assigned to alliance bases to be deployed in Iraq.
Germany, along with fellow anti-war NATO members Belgium, France, Luxembourg and Spain, went along with the decision to set up the Baghdad training mission but have refused to permit their officers stationed at NATO's two operations bases to participate, the officials said.
Is it time to scrap NATO?
Past time, imho. I think it's been just a US subsidy for the defense of Europe most of its life.
The EU is more than rich enough to meet their own defense needs. I don't quite understand the effort put forward to maintain this old cold war institution called NATO. This is especially true with the growing values gap between the United States and Europe.
NATO allies' absence in Iraq mission 'disturbing': supreme commander
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This headline should read: LIBERAL Nato allies' absence in Iraq mission 'NOT SURPRISING': supreme commander
Some of us have been consistent about this over the years. NATO is no more relevant to what the U.S. is doing in Iraq today than it was to what the U.S. did in Serbia in 1999.
NATO = expensive litmus test to see which allies we can depend on
Dump NATO. How quickly they forget??? Let them keep forgetting, and we will forget in the future. F*ck them. F*ck Europe, we can stand alone, if they don't want to play, we won't play in the future!!! Time to get out of the un too, they are just a bunch of punks and thugs, kind of like basketball teams. DUMP THEM ALL! I have never thought that we should be isolationists, but since these "so-called-allies" take their toys and go home, why should we protect them in the future???
Thanks ,but no thanks.
Deal with your problem, after all they brought the problem onto themselves.
They are in denial.
They were in denial in the 30's before Hitler rose to power.
NATO should be scrapped and re-formed with participating countries = New Europe.
Disturbedly interesting in that the process and progress undertaken in their abscence is increasingly branded as Our war.This across the world war was and is for humanity.There are players big time in this.
"Germany, along with fellow anti-war NATO members Belgium, France, Luxembourg and Spain, went along with the decision to set up the Baghdad training mission.."
Then they should not have agreed to this if they had no intentions of participating - and we probably should have known better, considering the sources.
I reminds me to what France did to Powell when France promise Powell a favorable vote at the UN.
We live in a "What have you done for me lately?" world. Nato was established to prevent the Soviets from overrunning Europe. Seems to me, if the EU wishes to be a counterbalancing socio-economic force against the USA, the least they can do is strap on a set and provide for their own defense. In the end, any threat to the USA from anywhere can be ultimately be decided fairly quickly without the need for NATO.
I say the USA should pull out of NATO and the UN asap. Next time the EU comes calling, we'll have to tell them that we're busy after our own interests (but if the bad guys come calling, we'll unleash hell like they have never imagined).
The euro-centric Germans and French want to gut NATO and replace it with their "EU" force, another way to stick their noses up at the Americans. Being unwilling to even pony up for a mere 200 member force is beyond despairing.
It's like telling a friend "I need money for open heart surgery" and being told "Oh, here's a dollar ... no wait, I need to buy a starbucks coffee, gimme my dollar back."
Why should NATO be expected to go to Iraq? Its mission is to defend Europe. It went afield in the Balkans, but probably wised up after that fiasco.
NATO is still vital and useful as an operational mechanism for burden-sharing with allies ... ah, there is the rub. They are not acting like allies. NATO cannot survive this kind of nonsense.
My point was that we should withdraw from NATO and redeploy our forces in our best interests. Did you understand my post?
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