Europeans see what America cannot
By ERIC MARGOLIS, TORONTO SUN
At this week's NATO conference in Vilnius, Lithuania, an angry U.S.
Secretary of Defence Robert
Gates accused some Europeans of not being prepared to "fight and die" in
Afghanistan in the
battle against the Taliban.
The undiplomatic Gates is quite right. Most Europeans regard the Afghan
conflict as a. wrong
and immoral; b. America's war; c. all about oil; or d. probably lost.
To many Europeans, the NATO alliance was created to deter the real threat
of Soviet aggression,
not to supply foot soldiers for George Bush's wars in the Muslim world.
While Gates and the Harper government were pleading for more troops, the
commander of the
40,000 NATO troops in Afghanistan, U.S. Gen. Dan McNeill, landed a
bombshell. If proper U.S.
military counter-insurgency doctrine were followed, McNeill admitted, the
U.S. and NATO would
need 400,000 troops to defeat Pashtun tribal resistance in Afghanistan.
When the Soviets occupied Afghanistan, they deployed 160,000 troops and
about 200,000 Afghan
Communist troops -- yet failed to crush the mostly Pashtun resistance.
Now, the U.S. and NATO
are trying the same mission with only 66,000 troops, backed by local
mercenaries grandly styled
the Afghan National Army.
Canada's calls for 1,000 more NATO troops, and the U.S. decision to send
3,200 marines, will
not alter the course of this war, which is turning increasingly against
the western occupiers.
In fact, the war is spreading into neighbouring Pakistan, a nation of 165
million, stretching
U.S. and NATO forces ever thinner.
A primary reason for Gates' recent call for U.S. troops to begin attacking
pro-Taliban Pashtun
tribesmen inside Pakistan is due to their growing attacks on allied supply
lines to Afghanistan.
As this column has re****ted, over 70% of U.S./NATO supplies come in by
truck through Pakistan's
tribal belt known as FATA, including all of their oil and gas. Attacks by
pro-Taliban tribesmen
against these vulnerable supply lines are jeopardizing western military
operations inside
Afghanistan.
HUNTERS NOW HUNTED
The hunters are becoming the hunted. Cutting off invaders' supply lines is
a time-honoured
Pashtun military tactic. They used it against Alexander the Great, the
British, and Soviets,
and are at it again.
What angry Sec. Gates fails to see is that by pu****ng NATO into a distant
Asian war without
political purpose or seeming end, he is endangering the very alliance that
is the bedrock of
U.S. power in Europe.
Europeans increasingly ask why they need the U.S.-dominated military
alliance, a Cold War
relic, in which they continue to play foot soldiers to America's atomic
knights, to paraphrase
the late German statesman, Franz Josef Strauss.
Why does the rich, powerful European Union even need NATO any more? The
Soviet threat is gone
-- at least for now. Nuclear-armed France and Britain are quite capable of
defending Europe
against outside threats. Why can't the new European Defence Force take
over NATO's role of
defending Europe and protecting EU interests?
In short, most Europeans see no benefit in playing junior members in an
alliance whose historic
time has passed and that serves primarily as an instrument of U.S. power.
Wa****ngton's sharpest
geopolitical thinker, Zbigniew Brzezinski, calls NATO a "stepping stone"
the U.S. uses to
project power into Europe.
By pu****ng NATO towards a bridge too far, the Bush administration may end
up fatally
undermining the alliance and encouraging anti-American forces in Europe.
In fact, it's becoming evident that the cash-strapped U.S. needs the EU
more than the EU needs
the U.S.
CONSCRIPTION
Final point. If impassioned claims by U.S. and Canadian politicians that
the little Afghanistan
war must by won at all costs, then why don't they stop orating, impose
conscription, and send
400,000 soldiers, including their own sons, to fight in Afghanistan?
Of course they won't. They prefer to waste their own soldiers, and grind
up Afghanistan, rather
than admit this war against 40 million Pashtun tribesmen was a terrible
mistake that will only
get worse.
http://www.torontosun.com/News/Columnists/Margolis_Eric/2008/02/10/4838323-sun.php
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