With Friends Like These...

It has been revealed, allegedly, that the Italian Secret Service paid the Taliban to not attack their forces in Afghanistan. This deal ended when French forces took over as the region's NATO force of control and the French sent in troops expecting the ease the Italians had there, leading to the deaths of 10 French soldiers when confronted by the Taliban. This was the worst loss for France in over 25 years.
France has had a massive increase in demands to withdraw its forces ever since.

So what should our military's response be?

I say get out of our way. We are pulling out of Iraq, or so we are told, so how about we take some of those 140,000 troops, bring them home, send some of our other 1 million strong forces over to Afghanistan to replace all NATO and otherwise forces. Let this be a U.S. and Afghanistan military war. The Europeans don't have the stomach for a war obviously. So they should get out of the line of fire and let us do the job that needs to be done.

You see, in World War 2 allies worked together to win the war. We raced for control of Sicily with British and American forces. With the Allies and Soviet forces we raced to Berlin. The war had allies operating jointly, but separately but the difference between then and now they raced to win. We seem to be in a race to quit with the other nations.

Whether it be Spain's shameless withdrawal of troops from Iraq to the lesser vocal but still very active withdrawals by other nations from Iraq to the current calls for withdrawals in almost every nation in Europe and Canada, we have joined those calls.

Iraq was luck because of the surge. Afghanistan? It is at its worst right now. A withdrawal of forces would lead to a collapse of the Afghan government and the return of Taliban control and continuous civil war which would grant the Taliban new recruits constantly. Long road traveled would lead to more attacks on the U.S.

So instead of letting the situation get worse by having cowardly allies or withdrawals let the American forces take over and do the job the way it needs to be done.


Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/16/world/europe/16italy.html?em