Analysis: Gates should not expect troop increases from allies

A soldier with the 3 Scots, a Scottish battalion of the British Army, cuts the latch on a shop stall at the bazaar in the village of Lakari in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan last month, while a second documents the event. The troops air-assaulted into the Taliban-strong village in support of a U.S. Marine operation in the area and searched the bazaar for bomb-making materials. They left a new lock and key at each stall.


Analysis: Gates should not expect troop increases from allies
By Geoff Ziezulewicz, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Thursday, October 22, 2009

Defense Secretary Robert Gates sounds out NATO defense ministers this week in search of more support for the war in Afghanistan at a time when many Europeans seem unsure why they’re fighting the war in the first place.

Critics say European leaders have not sufficiently explained to their citizens how the deaths of their uniformed countrymen make them safer.

And despite assertions last month by NATO Secretary-General Anders Rasmussen that the alliance will not bow out of Afghanistan, there are myriad reasons why the U.S. should not expect the largest NATO countries to offer up more combat troops.

To begin with, it’s no longer 2001, when the trauma and outrage that followed the 9/11 attacks in the U.S. prompted NATO members to quickly offer military assistance for the American effort to oust the Taliban from Afghanistan.

“No one has made the case for what we’re doing in Afghanistan,” said Olivier Grouille, an analyst at the London-based Royal United Services Institute, a defense think tank. “The public does not buy the argument that the streets of Britain are safer from domestic terrorism because we’re fighting in Afghanistan.”


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=65550



unhappycamper comment: Additionally you sorry fuckers have neither a mission statement nor an exit strategy. Why would any sane country jump into this bucket o shit?

But our "leaders" keep trying to sell it anyway.