NATO in tug of war

[lovuian]

http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/?sid=342225

he 26-member states of NATO begin a two-day summit next Wednesday in the Romanian capital Bucharest.

Top of the agenda will be the alliance’s involvement in Afghanistan. At the moment the one thing certain to come out of the meeting is a long-term “vision statement” on Afghanistan. This is hardly an adequate outcome as the Afghans face ever-greater challenges from Taliban insurgents and Al-Qaeda. The time for brave vision is long past. What is now wanted from the world’s premier military organization is action

Yet NATO is at odds with itself. There is an ugly split between members prepared to commit troops to fight and hold back the insurgency, principally the Americans, British Canadians and Dutch and other countries, notably France and Germany who are seen as not pulling their military weight, preferring to keep their small troop contingents patrolling peaceful areas or training the Afghan Army. The political argument is that the conflict in Afghanistan enjoys little domestic sympathy. Yet this is to ignore the commitment that all NATO countries willingly undertook in 2003, when they agreed to assume the UN mandate to provide peace and security in Afghanistan.

And even when it comes to training the Afghan Army, the NATO members who want to avoid battle are also failing. Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak Thursday warned that insufficient new troops were being trained. The armed forces currently number 50,000 and NATO says it is hoping another 20,000 would join the ranks by the end of this year. Yet this is far short of the Afghan assessment that there will need to be a properly trained and equipped army of up to 200,000 to be able to confront the insurgent Taliban. Wardak almost seemed to be trying to cajole recalcitrant NATO countries yesterday when he pointed out that the sooner Afghanistan had its own effective security forces, the sooner, NATO could disengage from his country.
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Iraq and Afghanistan the desire for war dies out

[ConcernedCanuk]

1. Afghanistan was a lie anyways - just an excuse to mobilize USA forces for Iraq's invasion.

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The Soviet Union couldn't take the Taliban with over 100,000 Soviet troops -

Taliban got smarter and tougher.

Now NATO is trying to beat them with less than half the forces the Soviets had, and more disorganized as well.

All we are going to do over there is mess things up,

And die.