Is NATO delivering in Afaghanistan ?

Hi

There are significant NATO forces already in Afghanistan who are doing an impressive job with limited resources. The military commander there has told NATO that he needs members to commit more forces to ensure the job is done as efficiently as possible. Some countries such as USA, UK, France, Canada are already doing quite a lot but the request is pretty much aimed at NATO states that are not. After a conference yesterday zero further commitment was made - as of today only Poland have come forward with an offer of further troops.

Are reluctant NATO states right to say no or is NATO carrying passengers ?

In a post cold war world does NATO even have a future ?

What think you ?

 

Moderator

Any chance of moving this to the Post WW2 category, please ?

 

The problem is that there is a political movement that wants to see the troops out of Afghanistan. Ie. NDP is very much for pulling out of Afghanistan. :cry:

 

lol, who cares what the NDP think , lol

 

The 'Post WW2' category is for armour only - this is an appropriate section for this topic. And a good topic it is.

My immediate question is what authority decided that NATO should police Afghanistan? Personally I think that other NATO members should follow Poland's example, but I do wonder why the burden has suddenly becoe a NATO thing.

 

Another problem is that this NATO demand came at the same moment some of it's members are sending considerable forces to Lebanon to control the cease fire between Israel and Hezbollah.

There is a fear of overstretching in many countries.

 

It is because America is trying to shift responsibiliy to someone else and since America and many other countries that participated in the fighting were NATO. It follows by a similair logic to this leave someone else in charge and get the hell out yourself.

 

I think your close on this one Gunter but I dont thin the US wants to run home with its tail between its legs.

I think they now realize the mess they made in Iraq and they recognize that they should be giving there full attention to cleaning that mess first and let NATO/UN have Afghanistan.

 

yes,we do go arround makeing mess,s we made a mess of desroying hitler and tojo (without our help the uk and red army would never have prevailed) we made mess,s in korea and viet nam ...we made a mess of shutting down the bolshevics...bosnia,somolia, and now the war against islamic terror.....good thing you euros and anzaks have us to go arround makeing mess,s or you guys would have to do it yourselves.....at least we know how grateful you all are for all our lost blood and treasure....i think we should take a break for a hundred years and let you guys take over entirely and show us silly yanks the way things should be done....pretty please..

 

I doubt Hitler would have prevailed against Russia. Evan if he had taken the Capital there would be large resistance everywhere and still a large Soviet army further east.
After America was attacked by Japan, I dont beleive the United States of America was the first to declare war on them. Interesting isn't it?
I am 100% certain America was not the only country in Korea. Another interesting point is that because the Americans didnt listen to the president and kept on goin they gave China a reason to attack and drive America back to where the border was in the begining.
Vietnam, well France had been fighting there for a long time, evan durign the Korean was if I remember.
What did America do in Somalia? I dont beleive they solved anything. If I remember it was a complete disaster.
The war on islamic terror. You know that is really funny because those are pretty much the same tactics Osama bin Laden has been using in Afghanistan with American support against the Soviets?, so why werent they considered terrorists in America? Oh wait America armed and trained them also. Not to mention it gave masses of new recruits for radical islam groups.

 

without american lend lease aid the uk and soviets would have been in very dire straights indeed...the uk was strangled by u boats and stalin may have sued for a seperate peace as did reds in ww1....yes ,fortunatly for the uk and sovs ,the japs did attack the us in dec 41 (this attack was more or less forced by fdrs embargo of japan)...as winston c. said ...after dec7 he could sleep the sleep of the saved.....in the cold war we fought in korea and viet nam..yes the french did try to save thier lucrative colony..we were attempting to stop the communist exspantion everywhere and anywhere.yes there we small nato contingents that helped us in this endevour....russia without provacation or warning invaded afganistan...yes the cold war was still on and anyone who was shooting at russians was a freind of ours...we trained the afgans to shoot stingers ,i dont think they needed our help with shooting their enfields .....my point about somolia is we tried to help starving black africans and stop muslim bosnian women from being repeatedly gang raped by christian serbs.. was there oil to be had ?....nope,we were just trying to do the right thing because gunter you guys were once again doing nothing....please....can we take a rest? can you guys take over at least the crap jobs in YOUR OWN back yard...thanks we would sure appreciate it....

 

Indochina was hardly a lucrative colony for the French Woody, it was a huge drain on manpower and resources.

I also don't understand your comments about sorting out problems in our back yards really. There were plenty of european troops in KFOR and IFOR, and neither Afghanistan, Somalia, Korea nor Vietnam can be considered "In our backyards". :-?

 

Absolutely.
And of course France never tried to keep Indochina as a colony.
From 1946 onwards french policy as aimed at giving independenve to the colony under a pro western governement(Emperor Bao Dai)which would keep good relations with France(sort of french commonwealth).

Also I think calling the situation in Iraq a mess is a perfectly valid opinion to have.
You might of course disagree with such an opinion, but I absolutely fail to see how Somalia, Korea, Viet Nam, WW2....are any relevant in that debate.

 

Zhukov disagreed with you that the Soviets could have gone it alone (no lend/lease) but then what does he know?

Is it? What do you think is interesting about it?

The American forces along with the South Koreans made up the bulk of the forces in Korea. UK and Commonwealth participation was on a relatively small scale.

They fed a lot of hungry people who would have died otherwise. After the Marines were withdrawn and only small Army units were presetn did the events depicted in Blackhawk Down occur and soon after all forces were withdrawn.

Because there was no al queda at that time who was engaging in terror attacks on civilians. The resistance in Afghanistan now just as in the resistance against the Soviets isn't considered terrorism it's the other activities of al queda in attacking civilian targets that make them terrorists.

 

NATO is just lucky that they do not have to fight a united Afghanistan like the Soviets did in 1989, now only radical factions remain to oppose them: After the Soviet Afghan War, what was left of the Mujahidin turned upon each other in a bid for power... factional warfare; the Taliban just happened to come out on top. And now Usama is angry at America, partly for failing to help rebuild Afghanistan as promised after sponsoring the war against the soviets.

A good historian on the subject, if you want to look into it is Neamatollah Nojumi... He was himself a Mujahidin fighter in 89' - Finally a historian with the balls to back it up

 

Why is it not interesting? Well I find it interesting that America was not the first to declare war on those who attack them. America invaded and killed people for less.

 

I dont mean the US runs around a makes messes. Maybe I should have worded that better.

Perhaps they realize that they underestimated the war in Iraq and now it is the best move if the concentrate there instead.

I think Afghanistan is best left to a countries with long historys of brokering peace after conflict, like the Anzacs, UK, Canada.

 

I asked you first. What is noteworthy about war being declared on Dec. 8th, 1941 one day after the attack? The declaration had to be approved by congress and signed by the president. What are you trying to imply?

 

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But are other armies really bether at peace keeping than the US army??

Why would that be so?

Personally I think the peace keeping record of the US is as good or bad as anyone's.

 

Not implying anything I just find it an interesting fact.