FR WAR NEWS! WAR News at Home and Abroad You'll Hear Nowhere Else!
All the News the MSM refuses to use!
Or if they do report it, without the anti-War Agenda Spin!
Not for commercial use. For educational and discussion purposes only.
Posted on 10/25/2007 5:09:19 PM PDT by SandRat
HEIDELBERG, Germany, Oct. 25, 2007 – Defense Secretary Robert M Gates urged European military leaders meeting here today to step up their countries’ contributions in Afghanistan and eliminate restrictions on their forces that threaten the mission’s success.
The NATO alliance has made huge contributions leading the International Security Assistance Force, Gates told officers attending the 15th Conference of European Armies. U.S. Army Europe sponsors the annual ground-forces conference.
He noted that NATO leads 25 provincial reconstruction teams that are helping the Afghans build infrastructure, while some allies are conducting decisive military actions that are thwarting Taliban efforts. Meanwhile, Gates said, NATO is helping to build Afghan security forces. The Afghan army is now 47,000 members strong and represents every major Afghan ethnic group.
However, Gates expressed concern that, without more mentoring and liaison teams and other resources, momentum won’t continue. “Our progress in Afghanistan is real, but it is fragile,” he told the officers.
The secretary repeated the message he delivered yesterday to NATO ministers during their conference in Noordwijk, Netherlands: NATO needs to commit more resources to ensure the mission succeeds.
“At this time, many allies are unwilling to share the risks, commit the resources and follow through on collective commitments to this mission and to each other,” he said. “As a result, we risk allowing what has been achieved in Afghanistan to slip away.”
Another big problem is caveats, restrictions imposed by individual countries on how their forces can be used within NATO. Gates said this problem is “symptomatic of a deeper challenge facing NATO.”
He compared the problem to a chess game in which one player enjoys full liberty of motion and another can move only a single space in a single direction. “One player is clearly handicapped,” he said. “Similarly, restrictions placed on what a given nation’s forces can do and where they can go put this alliance at a sizable disadvantage.”
Gates said he recognizes countries’ need for political oversight of their deployed ground forces and that each NATO country has a different political and economic landscape.
“While there will be nuances particular to each country’s rules of engagement, the ‘strings’ attached to one nation’s forces unfairly burden others and have done real harm in Afghanistan,” he said.
Gates urged conference participants to get their governments to take another look at these restrictions. “As you know, better than most people, brothers in arms achieve victory only when all march in step toward the sound of the guns,” he said.
“To that end,” he said, “I’m asking for your help to make caveats in NATO operations, wherever they are, as benign as possible -- and better yet, to convince your national leaders to lift restrictions on field commanders that impede their ability to succeed in critical missions.”
FR WAR NEWS! bump
What he really wanted to say: “80% of the countries in NATO are freeloading parasites whose governments and decadent peoples are not worth a cup of warm spit. All the real work, burdens, and risk is borne by the other 20% (or less).”
The thing is, that NATO is indeed multilateral alliance that activates itself only in the case that one member nation is attacked. If the war or the attack is over than the duty to stand in for the other members is not relevant anymore. In Afghanistan the main threat is indeed over. Beside of that the US wanted to clear up this case on their own in the beginning. Your forces wanted to have the total control over all operations. This is fine since the US are those who lead the operations in Afghanistan and they were the ones who were attacked.
Nevertheless Countries like France, Italy or Germany have for sure no reason to classify themselves as inferiors. Therefore it is quite logical that they made their own rules how they want to have their troops to operate in this godforsaken place. Sovereign nations with sovereign decisions. Some of them have a completely different strategy than the US how to act in Afghanistan and they are quite successful with it. Therefore I think it is unfair and wrong to to shrug off the efforts of those nations. They could get the impression that since it is not their war anyway and there is no appreciation either that it is better to pull off soon. This could leave the US in a quite uncomfortable situation.
I certainly don’t think that NATO has much of a future since there is so little consensus upon common aims and interests, and so the future will be all about “alliances of the willing” since NATO has become almost as useless a debating society as the pitiful UN.
As for Afghanistan, regardless of whether you think European countries SHOULD care less about what is happening there, the fact is that commitments have been made that have not been fulfilled, and that is no way to sustain an alliance in the midst of a war.
Nope. I.e. we Germans (I am from Germany) do exactly what we said from the very beginning. We secure our northern sector in Afghanistan and parts of Kabul. Nothing more or less. If you can do without our help we would be extremely happy to pull out tomorrow since nobody in Germany is really interested into this godforsaken place. We managed to build up a good relationship with most of the Afghans. Therefore it is true that our sectors are relatively quiet. Beside of this we offered you help in the south through the deployment of our elite squad KSK in the beginning of Operation Enduring Freedom. This was help that was not used by the US. Those guys were standing somewhere in the nowhere doing nothing. Therefore we pulled them out some time ago. If America and the UK are unable to pacify the south of Afghanistan they should ask themselves if it is reasonable to behave the way they did in the past. To me is searching for terrorists okay while carpet bombing of villages is not i.e.. It does not make the area stable but it costs bazillions of Dollars and last but not least American lives. The force you have to dispose to eliminate terrorists provokes more new terrorism. It is a vicious circle. Young guys whose families were burned as "collateral" damage i.e. usually do not turn into good friends of the US then. The Israelis are playing a simular game since more than 50 years now and they were not able to win it so far. They survived, but they are unable to reach a punch line were we can say that it is over. This is inefficient and a permanent waste of money and lives.
The US pacified Germany or Japan after WWII quite fast since they appeared as the "good guys" there. Resistance against the "good" does not make any sense to the vast majority. This is not different in Afghanistan. It would be a quite simple and extremely intelligent strategy to zero out rebels by winning the hearts of the common people in this country. Instead of this your forces obviously search for trouble. All this helps the Taliban to revive like a Phoenix.
Since neither the US nor the UK are rethinking their current strategy I doubt that our politicians are sending additional soldiers into a war that pursues a strategy we are not convinced of. If you want more western European involvement you have to deal with western European rules. This is quite simple.
I certainly don’t think that NATO has much of a future since there is so little consensus upon common aims and interests, and so the future will be all about “alliances of the willing” since NATO has become almost as useless a debating society as the pitiful UN.
It depends. After all it would be quite reasonable not to give up the possibility to let the western nations act united. America alone is not able to deal with the future conflicts on this planet. As a democracy it is quite impossible to fight preemptive strikes until the very end since the voters are sooner or later pis*ed because of the burden such a policy brings for them. We will see what is going to be the case in the US after the elections in 2008. If you have a female democratic president then, she will surrender (they will have another word for it then) in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere like your administrations did in Viet Nam in the early 70ties. If it is possible to find a suitable Republican things look different.
The recent way of dealing with military matters had its price for the US. That much is sure. If you want more help from outside you have to maintain such institutions like NATO on one hand and you have to act more unilateral on the other. Otherwise you are indeed restricted to quite unstable coalititions of the willing.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.