Article found via Instapundit on the future of NATO. It sucks, but it's true...the idea of NATO being, "if one is attacked, all are attacked," simply did not hold up. As an American, I never felt solidarity from our European allies. They did not feel as if they were attacked. It's like when friends don't stand up for you when they really ought to. Often people think strong people or strong countries don't need support when being picked on. "America can handle it" - that type of attitude. I can't stand that shit. It'll be the same people who won't stand up to smaller scale things that won't stand up for bigger scale things. That I can guarantee.
I gotta check out this book, the Underminer. I bet it has political implications.
On another note, my crit studies teacher would have a field day with this comment:
International relations are like ex-girlfriends: if you're still deluding yourself you can get her back, every encounter will perforce be fraught and turbulent; once you realise that's never gonna happen, you can meet for a quick decaf latte every six – make that 10 – months and do the whole hey-isn't-it-terrific-the-way-we're-able-to-be-such-great-friends routine because you couldn't care less. You can even make a few pleasant noises about her new romance (the so-called European Constitution) secure in the knowledge he's a total loser.
First of all, it's a really funny quote. But it's got some seriously problematic issues lying underneath - America viewing itself as the macho man and viewing the Europeans as whiny chicks. This is one of the most legitimate criticisms, to me, of colonialism, the psycho-sexual element, reducing the colonized to the feminine, submissive and the whole sexual fantasy of pentration into another culture. If we're stuck in the narrative of ourselves as men and the rest of the world as women to be settled down with, or conquered - Virgin's or Ho's...witches or queens...or any other type of "partnership" rooted in dominance and Freudian sexual motivations - I do believe we'll be in perpetual war. A war of sexual domination.
But if we're going to be in that war, perhaps it is time the Europeans bent over and took one in the rear, they've done it to enough people themselves. Ah, yes, the morals of Sublime....(Date Rapist) now takes it in the behind. Hat tip, Bradley on the mic, in the LBC.
1 comment:
No doubt there was "official" support by Europe and the UN for the American effort in Afghanistan, but all the fighting is being done by American's, Afghans, and a handful of British and Australian troops.
Quote:
Remember last year's much trumpeted Nato summit in Turkey? This was the one at which everyone was excited at how the "alliance" had agreed to expand its role in Afghanistan beyond Kabul to the country's somewhat overly autonomous "autonomous regions".
What this turned out to mean on closer examination was that, after the secretary-general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, put the squeeze on Nato's 26 members, they reluctantly put up an extra 600 troops and three helicopters for Afghanistan. That averages out at 23.08 troops per country, plus almost a ninth of a helicopter apiece. As it transpired, the three Black Hawks all came from one country - Turkey - and they've already gone back. And Afghanistan is supposed to be the good war, the one Continental officials all claim to have supported, if mostly retrospectively and for the purposes of justifying their "principled moral opposition" to Iraq.
Granted - a large part of this has to do with Rumsfeld and Cheney insisting on using mostly American military force. Reason being, it's probably more efficient to use troops of a single country than trying to integrate different command structures...and the strategy of Afghanistan has involved a relatively small number of troops.
But the larger issue is this: Europe benefited greatly for American power, military and financial from WWII to the present. Europe never had to pay the full benefit to them during the arms race against the Soviets, even though they were the most threatened by the potential spread of the USSR. But fair enough, it was in our mutual interest - we got to keep an eye on Russia from Europe and Turkey, without being exposed to Soviet tanks, etc, like the Eastern Europeans and eventually the Afghans.
But in the absense of the Soviet threat, Europe (and by this, I mean the continent - led by France and Germany) has made it's priority to counter-balance American power. This is the driving idea behind the EU. Europe has made aggressive moves financially, threatening to block American mergers and so forth. The Iraq war is the most explicit example of this.
Fair enough if Europe has principaled objections to the way the US is handling the "terror war," or my prefered nomanclature, the war against Islamic Fascism. But then what is the point of having NATO?
Lastly, I would argue, perhaps naively that the REASON Europe has been bloodied much more than our country (particularly in the 20th century) is precisely because they have a shitty approach to handling bullies.
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