Your British officer is coming home anyway (and will stay there). Blair is going down, and neither the Conservatives nor Labor will stand with the Americans after that. The end of the alliance is here, killed by New Labor. I am a bit bitter, given that my family sent its sons to Europe to take care of Adolf, and now the Euros seem to have forgotten that. Yes, America will do it alone if we have to. Mark Steyn got that right.
This is a NATO operation supported by the U.N. NATO obligations will supercede governmental change because of Treaty commitments. As long as the U.S. wants NATO Forces in Afghanistan, they will be there regardless of leftist whining from Britain Canada or elsewhere.
Rubbish. He'll be returning to Afghanistan after his leave of less than three weeks.
The end of the alliance is here, killed by New Labor.
There are many... erm.. well, MANY.. reasons to loathe NL. I have a friend, a good old-style Glesga Socialist, and he despises that lot every bit as much as my soldier and I do. Contempt for NL kinda unifies both the Left and the Right. It's a British thing.
I am a bit bitter, given that my family sent its sons to Europe to take care of Adolf, and now the Euros seem to have forgotten that.
Your family sent its sons to Europe because Japan attacked the US at Pearl Harbour, and as a result of that attack President Roosevelt declared war on Japan. The declaration led to a state of war between the US and Japan's European allies, Germany and Italy. The romantic notion that the Americans entered the war to save Europe and some Brits from Hitler is just that, a romantic notion.
After the US was attacked on 9/11, your president as well as many Americans expected all of us, Brits as well as Europeans, to become involved, even to the extent of sending our troops into combat. By comparison, the Americans didn't get involved in WW II until after Pearl Harbour, by which time many of our cities were in ruins, tens of thousands of civilians were dead, some countries had been occupied, and we had been at war for over two years.
Need I reming you that no American fighters came to our aid during the 27 months, between the time Britain declared war in early Sept 1939 and the attack on Pearl Harbour on 7 December 1941. Between 7 September 1940 and 16 May 1941 43,000 British civilians were killed and more than a million houses were destroyed. I won't go into the number of historic structures and irreplaceble national treasures that were destroyed by German bombs.
When Americans think of the Blitz, they think of London, and that isn't incorrect. Let me add a few more cities the Germans bombed; Avonmouth, Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Coventry, Clydebank (Glasgow), Greenock, Hull, Plymouth, Liverpool, Manchester, Nottingham, Newcastle, Portsmouth, Sheffield, Southampton, Sunderland, Swansea, and Swindon. Just for fun they bombed Bath, Canterbury, Exeter, Norwich and York, cities that had no strategic value but were of historic significance.
Mind you, this destruction and carnage all took place and the Americans had no intention of joining in to defend us. So don't be bitter. It would seem that the Americans placed little value on the 43,000 dead British civilians, not to mention the ruined cities and dead civilians on the continent..
Now I don't blame you lot for that. You Americans didn't see it as your war until those nasty boys crawled into bed with you and bit you on the bum on a lovely Sunday morning in Hawaii. And what was going on in Washington on that fine morning at the same moment their planes were swanning about sinking your Pacific fleet? Your officials in Washington were trying to hammer out a peace treaty with some Japanese diplomats who just happened to be good friends and allies of those same Germans who had destroyed so much of our country and had killed so many of us. It would have been a treaty that would have kept America out of the war. Some alliance.
Please don't act as if America (finally) joined the Allied effort to do the Brits and the Euros a favour. What happened was that the bad boys attacked the US and at that point the Americans joined the fighting because it suddenly became your war. The Americans weren't fighting to do us any favours. European or British, we all know that.
Of course the knock on effect was that after FDR declared war, the British and European Allies had one more nation aiding in the fighting, one that wasn't knackered by two years of war. No denying that extra manpower and materiel helped. However, we are under no illusions that coming to our aid was your primary intention.
Yes, America will do it alone if we have to. Mark Steyn got that right.
Which brings us back to where we started. If our fighting men are such inferior soldiers as some think, then you Americans should 'go it alone'. Suit yourself.