Posted on 09/30/2009 9:11:52 AM PDT by Typical_Whitey
WASHINGTON (AFP) – US President Barack Obama said Tuesday the war in Afghanistan was not purely an "American battle" but was a broader NATO mission, as he met the western alliance's chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen. "This is not a American battle, this is a NATO mission," Obama told reporters after the Oval Office meeting, which comes as he launches a series of intense talks on whether to send more US soldiers to the Afghan war. "We are working actively and diligently to consult with NATO at every step of the way," Obama said. NATO Secretary-General Rasmussen put on a united front with Obama, arguing that "our operation in Afghanistan is not America's responsibility or burden alone, it is and it will remain a team effort." "I agree with President Obama in his approach: strategy first, then resources," Rasmussen said, adding that all NATO members were studying a grim report on the war by US commander General Stanley McChrystal. "This alliance will stay united and we will stay in Afghanistan as long as it takes to finish our job."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Exactly. He apparently convinced the NATO guy to sign up for this responsibility. Now Obama can pull out and feel clean about it.
This man is an utter buffoon. I am actually outraged about this bullbleep.
Exactly he is as slick as a snake.But this move will really tick off all of the weirdo green tree loving anti-war pro communism looney lefties.
That’s right pass the buck you idiotic pu$$y.
Last I checked, those planes didn’t slam into NATO headquarters, but into the Pentago and the WTC.
Its clear this guy grew up without a father, because he’s clearly not had the smacks to the back of the head he’s needed.
LOL re: last sentence.
“That’s not the Obama I knew.”
McCrystal’s jaw is going to be dragging on the ground after today’s video conference.
“U.N. LAWYERS TARGET U.S. TROOPS”
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=337473733467144
“Justice: As if fighting a war in Afghanistan isn’t hard enough, ambitious global prosecutors have rolled into Kabul looking to charge U.S. troops. Intentional or not, such legalism will sap U.S. morale as it did in Vietnam.
At about the time NATO’s new secretary-general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, warned NATO’s European members against an early pullout, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the top prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, whose body is charged with looking for international war criminals, announced he was looking for new “clients” from anyone with a grievance in Afghanistan.
At a briefing Wednesday in The Hague, Moreno-Ocampo said he had launched a new war crimes inquiry, seeking information about “torture” especially — a European obsession — and had already mined the human rights groups for stories. He added he was also “very open” to more information from foreign governments.
Oh, he’d been evenhanded in his Monday-morning battlefield quarterbacking of course, promising he’d prosecute both Taliban and NATO troops as moral equals.
But it doesn’t take a genius to know what the spotlight-loving attorney (who once launched his own reality TV show back in Argentina) is really after: Americans in the dock as war criminals.
The atmosphere that makes a prosecutor like Moreno-Ocampo ambitious enough to go after Americans instead of a real monster like, say, Fidel Castro, can only occur when the West’s will has weakened, as Rasmussen warned.
After all, if a war to defend our civilization can be reduced to a series of police-brutality cases, then Afghanistan isn’t about victory.
This is underscored by Washington’s conflicting aims.
Though our president has rightly boosted the number of troops in Afghanistan, he’s created a climate of doubt by declaring the war on terror an “overseas contingency operation” and stating he doesn’t believe in “winning.” It’s poison for morale and gives momentum to the kind of bureaucratic, legalistic and defeatist thinking that preceded our bitter pullout in Vietnam.
Moreno-Ocampo’s entry into Afghanistan is a sign that legalism has begun to overtake victory as a goal, at a time when our Taliban foes still believe in victory.
On the battlefield, our troops are increasingly constrained by legalistic rules of engagement.
Case in point: On Tuesday, four U.S. Marines and seven of their Afghani allies walked into a well-planned ambush and were killed in the Kunar province near the Pakistani border.
“We are pinned down. We are running low on ammo. We have no air. We’ve lost today,” Marine Maj. Kevin Williams, 37, told his Afghan counterpart, responding to the latter’s repeated demands for helicopters, McClatchy Newspapers reported.
Rules of engagement condemned them to die because they couldn’t get air cover.
According to McClatchy: “U.S. commanders, citing new rules to avoid civilian casualties, rejected repeated calls to unleash artillery rounds at attackers dug into the slopes and tree lines — despite being told repeatedly that they weren’t near the village.”
Meanwhile, all pullout talk condemned those U.S. troops, too.
Ground intelligence sources who might have warned them were reportedly more fearful of Taliban retaliation than convinced that American troops would be able to defend them, given the weakening will of the West. They opted to survive.
Now, the latest legalistic block against winning is an international prosecutor looking for NATO troops to prosecute.
Back in 2002, President Bush told the ICC that there wouldn’t be any of that, and he rescinded the U.S. signature from the Rome Statute that would have opened the door to that. Today, there’s a legal battle going on at the ICC to make U.S. troops subject to doing it and there’s no signal from the White House that it will stop it.
Don’t think Moreno-Ocampo won’t do it. His history as a prosecutor suggests an affinity for publicity over justice, which is just what the anti-American crowd wants.
(snip)Someone like that won’t hesitate for a minute to make a big show of putting U.S. troops in the dock for “war crimes” no matter what the impact in Afghanistan. That’s defeat.
____________________________________________________________
Then there is this little tidbit:
0’s Giant Ego is too busy trying to be king of the World. He has no time to be bothered with what could be avoidable deaths of American servicemen.
Besides, he’s proving his qualifications to head up the “Security Council” (excuse my utter hysterical laughter!) to the America hating dweebs at the U.N..:
“Obama to seal US-UN relationship”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2334897/posts
“That’s not the Afghanistan I knew.”
“This alliance will stay united and we will stay in Afghanistan as long as it takes to finish our job.”
NATO Secretary-General Rasmussen
Hmmm...others are stepping up to filling the role of ‘Leader of the Free World’ which obama is running away from.
Sarkozy stepped up to fill the role a couple of days ago regarding iran.
He tries to blend in and escape when he needs to speak up and make a decision. He will always be there for the softballs from the press, talk show hosts and worshipers.
I swear...if Obama claimed the sky was blue I’d reflexively disagree. The man hasn’t said one thing in 9 months that I’ve agreed with!
The Taliban have been placing munitions and bases in mosques and civilian centers. They’ve attacked open air markets. They have indiscriminately killing civilians.
Perhaps the U.N. lawyers are looking to charge them?
.
.
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Ok...I won’t hold my breath either.
How true.
Do you sense that Obama is planning on turning our troops over to the International Courts anytime soon?
Less overwhelming than a lot of these things. In April there were 30000 troops from the European NATO countries in Afghanistan (link). At that time we only had 38000 troops there. There are also troops from non-NATO countries. Now we have close to 68000 troops in Afghanistan. Unfortunately I don't have time right now to look up all the latest figures for each country.
“Obami is a follower and has never been a leader. This is why he was at the bottom of his class in the U.S. Senate (what did he actually do there?).”
My first thought was ‘bench warmer’....then I google obama and baskeball....
LOL! HE WAS A BENCH WARMER!!!!!! i didn’t know that!!!
Obama: The Bench-Warmer of Of the Free World!
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