Posted on 09/02/2007 6:26:54 PM PDT by familyop
Bump that.
Unfortunately to save ourselves from Iran etc we save them in the process
Sort of like the USA
In order to save our way of life we save the damn liberals from committing suicide
It is maddening
And then it goes into screaming fits when the US acts to protect Europe’s own vital oil supply through the Gulf. Europe is now a hysterical old woman.
We should not be so quick to give up NATO. NATO saved the West from Soviet imperialism and is still viable.
Oh I imagine the Brits will rue the day they left Iraq, believeing in Pelosi rather than Bush. Gordon Brown thought America would lose in Iraq. He was wrong.
And now the Brits will ned the US to help them protect their interests in the Carribean and in the SOuth Atlantic.
Not much chance of that now. Gordon Brown is a strategic , short sighted idiot.
Mr. Brown will rue the day he pulled British forces out of Iraq.
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Ref.:
In a new outburst of antiwestern sabre-rattling, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela has threatened Britain with revenge for the Falklands war of 1982. The belligerent Latin American leftist warned last week that his recent build-up of sophisticated Russian and Iranian weapons would be used to destroy the British fleet if it attempted to return to the South Atlantic.
Speaking on his weekly television show Alo Presidente (Hello, Mr President), Chavez denounced what he described as Britains illegal occupation of the Falklands and repeated his call for a regional military alliance against Britain and the United States.
If we had been united in the last war, we could have stopped the old empire, Chavez said, as he gesticulated to maps showing how Venezuelan aircraft and submarines would intercept British warships. Today we could sink the British fleet.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1890282/posts
This is a very silly article.
Did anyone imagine that western troops will stay in Iraq forever? We Brits want to be out because when the USA bombs Iran, we don’t want to be in a Shi’ite neighbourhoood. Also, if the Muslim tw*ts can’t sort themselves out by now, why should our boys suffer in the process?
PS Mr Chavez is inviting a Special Air Service message.
No. No. France is our new friend. Sarkozy went to GW's BBQ. They will help now.
yitbos
Was the NATO mutual defence clause ever invoked for Iraq?
If not, did the US request it to?
Good idea, but Gordon Brown is intent on amalgamating the effectiveness out of the British Military. In a few years Britain may have very little left of the SAS as Brown restructures the military into a socialist peace corps.
The tried and true ways will be lost as lessons learned.
But we know that all that high tech weaponry will make up for it. ( SARC.)
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THE SPECIAL AIR SERVICE
The SAS (Special Air Service) is considered part of the infantry and a single Regular Battalion is established to carry out special operations. SAS soldiers are selected from other branches of the Army, after exhaustive selection tests.
There are two regiments of TA SAS.
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http://www.armedforces.co.uk/army/listings/l0129.html
Wait a minute ....this so called ‘withdrawal’ was on the books as far back as 2003-2004, yet it is been turned into some sort of ‘surrender’ by the media, the Left, and PARTICULARLY the Right. It is quite interesting. While I think the Brits have become quite soft (and many of the jokes said about the French have been just as applicable towards the Brits, more so after that whole kidnapping debacle by the Iranians), I do not think this whole Basra thing is surrender. Unless they started to ‘surrender,’ with the US’ blessing, in late 03-04.
It was invoked after 9/11. As for Iraq specifically I doubt it.
If I remember correctly, NATO gave air patrol assistance for the US, but then the United States decided not to use the NATO defense clause to go to war in Afghanistan and Iraq and opted for the “coalition of the willing” instead.
Perhaps the US did not formally request for the help out of fear the Europeans would turn us down and plunge the treaty into crisis.
The other possiblity that I could see is that the US did not want the Europeans to have the satisfaction of claiming for decades that they had to bail the US out of trouble even though everyone knows the US would do the heavy lifting.
If you don’t formally request for help under the treaty, I don’t see any reason to throw the treaty out. The problem with NATO, that I can see, has nothing to do with 911, Iraq, oil or Afghanistan. The fact is that European forces are too weak and out-of-date to fight along side the United States. Even if they were willing to go to war, they would have to be isolated by themselves on specific missions as to not interfere with US troops.
My understanding is that the UK is the only Western European power that has night fighting expertise. The other Euro forces are more comfortable with daytime fighting.
The author did not say to give it up, just pull back. Brittain did not give up the world but after WWI pulled back and left only a small presence at critical locations.
“NATO saved the West from Soviet imperialism and is still viable.”
What did NATO actually do substantially except provide bases and “liberty” locations for our troops?
“This is a very silly article.
Did anyone imagine that western troops will stay in Iraq forever?”
Absolutely. Who the hell is this defeatist author anyway? Maybe he should go back and try to remember what the plan for Iraq was in the first place??
Wait it’s coming back to me: get rid of Saddam, allow the Iraqi’s to install a democratic government of their choosing, train up their security forces to the point where they had the ability to take responsibility for their own country and then let them do it.
British forces have carried through on the plan and handed over control in all the provinces in the South (and Basra is just the last in that process which started about a year ago) and suddenly dimwit defeatists like this author are coming out to declare defeat! Did he declare defeat and surrender when the US handed over control of three provinces in the North, I wonder?
Hard to take seriously an article when he gets the first sentence wrong...
We get out of the U.N. and NATO, completely. Halt all funding to same and watch them whither.
Anything less equates to national masochism.
You just made the author's point:
It (Europe) never fights even the worst evils, not even to halt genocides in Kosovo, Rwanda and the Sudan. It is "pacifist" -- meaning that it will squeeze every drop of advantage out of Saddam Hussein and the Mullahs of Iran, while expecting the United States to do the heavy lifting. And then it goes into screaming fits when the US acts to protect Europe's own vital oil supply through the Gulf. Europe is now a hysterical old woman.
I respect and admire the British soldier. I've worked side by side with the Royal Marines in Southeast Asia and Iraq. However I do agree with many of the author's points. I'm not in favor of completely pulling out of NATO, but I think all parties should sit down and discuss relationships and responsibilities.
The United States has no greater friend than the UK... but I wonder if the UK's feelings are mutual.
Sorry to wax long winded but one final point is this FRiend, Iran wants nuclear weapons. Period. Anyone who thinks differently is burying their head in the sand.
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