There is a widespread notion that Afghanistan is safer for our troops than Iraq, yet Coalition and NATO combat deaths in Afghanistan are per capita nearly identical to those in Iraq. In 2007, per capita combat deaths will—in my opinion—likely be significantly higher in Afghanistan than Iraq. Why? There are many reasons, but one of the most important is that after years of neglect and dawdling, our European allies are awakening to the reality that a monster really is under the bed. But this awareness is not keeping pace with the threat. Our European friends are still not providing their people with proper equipment, all while the Taliban is getting stronger from the billion-dollar narcotics backwash that floods enemy coffers. As in Iraq, troop numbers are also dangerously low in Afghanistan, where the handfuls of friendly forces additionally lack sufficient air power to stretch their security resources.
- hätte man in afghanistan mehr/anderes machen sollen: joe galloway
Job One was Afghanistan, but it was left undone, too unimportant a backwater for the foreign policy amateurs, neo-conservative ideologues and military dilettantes advising the president. A preemptive invasion of Iraq and the toppling of a hated dictator in the heart of the Middle East — a cheap, easy and quick cakewalk — was what we needed.
Never mind that we'd chased a bunch of fanatical terrorists into a part of Pakistan that no
central government has ever conquered or controlled. We'd just throw $10 billion to Pakistan's military dictator and get him to take care of our problem, as if he didn’t have enough problems of his own dealing with Islamist fanatics. Afghanistan is a mess. We installed a weak central government whose writ doesn’t run much beyond the city limits of Kabul and starved it of the aid needed to repair a nation ravaged by three decades of war and civil war.
The Soviet Union sent 100,000 troops to wage unlimited and barbaric war and was
defeated. By contrast, we have 20,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan and we've browbeaten our reluctant NATO allies into sending another 50,000, many of whom are under orders from home not to take risks or get anyone killed.
- hätten die US die sachen in die eigene hand nehmen sollen: AFJ
[This] produced “a division of labor within the alliance and between NATO and the EU, wherein the United States plays a leading role during high-intensity phases of operations and European forces become more prominent in the post-conflict phase.” Following the 9/11 attacks, NATO invoked Article 5 of the Washington Treaty, the mutual defense
clause, for the first time. Many European countries offered their assistance for the invasion of Afghanistan, but the United States turned down all but the British offer because the Europeans lacked precision strike capabilities. In essence, the United States judged that active allied European participation in com¬bat missions would have complicated, rather than facilitated, the achieve¬ment of U.S. objectives.
However, Washington knew that once it ousted the Taliban, a peace¬keeping force would be required to maintain order until a new Afghan government could be elected. Opponents of “nation-building” — and there were many — concluded that the U.S. should not be the one to perform this mission.
Fast forward to 2007, and the mood in Washington has shifted decisively. Leaders now recognize that the line between combat and stabilization operations, as the experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq show, is not always clear, and that failing to take the post-conflict phase seriously is a recipe for disaster.
This development portends two possible effects on NATO. One is that it heaps further doubt on Europe’s abili¬ty to meaningfully contribute to mili¬tary operations. After all, if the U.S. is willing and able to conduct peace¬keeping and stabilization operations on its own, why bring in NATO — and its bureaucracy — for anything more than a window-dressing role?
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