Posted on 09/24/2005 5:02:19 PM PDT by FairOpinion
No,
The Germans won't help no matter what at this point. He also does a typical German thing and believes he speaks for all of Europe. Fact is, MOST of Europe is helping. Listen to his choice of words, "Western Europe" with which he defines Spain which withdrew, France, Belgium and Germany. He plays games with words, but lacks content.
Within Europe Great Britain, Netherlands, Italy, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Denmark, Norway, Check Republic, Slovakia, Estonia all have troops on the ground. Spain once did.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_of_the_willing
this list is NOT even complete.
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Norway_to_withdraw_troops_from_Iraq (Norway is there as well)…….
One of your best sources of information on this will be CENTCOM itself:
http://www.centcom.mil/ (But realize that CENTCOM is more than just Iraq, so you’ll see nearly everyone on their site but they may be in Afghanistan or elsewhere, which is still the CENTCOM AO)
He will then argue, “well, they are all leaving Iraq and abandoning your cause”, but of course forget that so are we. Everyone is withdrawing their troops, INCLUDING us. The intent was NEVER to go there and stay! As systems begin to stand up and Iraq can self govern itself we withdraw. 2003 we had 330,000 troops in Iraq. 2004 early on it was 180,000, later by the end 155,000, today 130,000 and sinking. As we train more Iraqis our troop levels fall.
Realize that the force levels in the above link are for 2005. Those are greatly smaller numbers already.
Europe largely backs our effort and before the war several nations even petitioned a formal declaration in our support on this issue. Who can’t remember Chirac telling the Checks “They missed an opportunity to keep their mouth shut?” Europe in reality is not represented by a Spiegel opinion poll in Germany.
The Germans themselves were inundated with one sided anti-war, anti-us coverage during the ramp up for war. The Germans have strong pacifist and a light anti-American undertone. When the “state” chose to take an anti-war position in 2002 the media went on a frenzy, feeding on each other and these underlying social views. Schroeder didn’t even need to say or do much anymore. But he benefited directly from this game. The Germans today are just like they were in the 60s through the fall of the wall. They will ride in our shadow, criticize us and talk of imperialism, yet they sit in the same boat with us. Under the table they will support us.
So the Germans today train Iraqis in UAE and Oberammergau. However, the SIGNIFICANT difference between today and the past is that the Germans became untrustworthy in 2002. They showed a disregard for our collective security interests and allied soldiers lives. This is very different from the past where they did little but never sabotaged our efforts.
Red6
You need to understand the word "democratic" in the original sense of the term - not in the American political sense.
A CDU member.
Really? Well, I was actually pretty much shocked and had some days and drinks to come over this.
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