[antimedia] antimedia: The world is in a sad state of affairs....

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Posted by antimedia:
The world is in a sad state of affairs....
http://www.antimedia.us/posts/1172728624.shtml


   ....or so it seems from a Wall Street Journal article forwarded to me
   by a faithful reader.

     On Oct. 2, 2001, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization took the
     unprecedented step of formally invoking Article 5 of its 1949
     Charter, which says that "an armed attack against one or more of
     them. . . . shall be considered an attack against all of them."
     Lord Geoffrey Robertson, then NATO's secretary-general, gave a
     press conference saying he wanted to "reiterate that the United
     States of America can rely on the full support of its 18 NATO
     Allies in the campaign against terrorism."
     In recent weeks, we've been reminded once again just how cheap
     those promises were. On Thursday, Stéphane Dion, who leads
     Canada's Liberal Party, announced that as prime minister he would
     bring an end to the country's 2,500-strong military commitment to
     southern Afghanistan. "Neither Canada, NATO nor the Americans
     anticipated how violent and dangerous Kandahar would become in
     2006," he said, adding that the proper role for Canadian forces is
     "to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people."
     Also in recent weeks, the Italian government of Romano Prodi
     briefly collapsed after it was unable to muster the votes to
     approve the enlargement of a U.S. Army base in Vicenza along with
     the continuance of Italy's 2,000-man deployment in Afghanistan.
     George W. Bush has had to plead publicly with NATO nations to
     increase their troop commitments and -- would it be too much to
     ask? -- deploy them in areas where they are likely to see combat.
     To make up for the NATO shortfall, Britain is sending in another
     1,400 soldiers, while the U.S. is extending the tour of the Tenth
     Mountain Infantry Brigade and sending in troops from the 82nd
     Airborne.
     It is a statistical certainty that American and British soldiers
     will pay a price in blood this spring because their French,
     Spanish, Italian, German and -- if Mr. Dion has his way -- Canadian
     counterparts mean to keep their moral slates clean. A century ago
     that would have been a mark of martial and national dishonor, of
     "letting the side down." Today, it is a concession to the political
     reality that most NATO governments cannot muster political support
     for anything except a "peace mission" in Afghanistan. "If you are
     non-U.S., implicitly there is a political calculus," says a senior
     U.S. Army officer about his NATO colleagues. "You are looking over
     your shoulder to Ottawa. You're asking: 'Will getting five
     killed-in-action mean a phone call about the wisdom of this
     particular operation?'"
     Afghanistan, of course, was supposed to have been the "good war" --
     the war that, unlike Iraq, everyone was willing to fight. Now the
     best that can be said for France, Germany, Italy and company is
     that they will not actively stand in the way of its being fought,
     so long as they're not fighting.

   Pretty disgusting. If western nations can't muster the courage to
   fight terrorism, they might was well implement shariah law right now
   and be done with it. (Muslims are hard at work in several countries
   trying to do just that.)
   Bin Laden may have been wrong about the US -- that remains to be seen
   -- but he was obviously right about the rest of the western nations.
   They have not the courage to fight even when they know it's the right
   thing to do and the only thing that can save them.
   The Canadians have fought bravely and fiercely in Afghanistan. What a
   bitter pill it must be for them to have their country pull the rug out
   from under them.
   Once again, the US and a few faithful allies have to shoulder the
   burden of fighting for the rest of the world. The sad thing is, we
   will never stop fighting even if the rest of the world gives up, and
   they know it. That's why they can slink away in fear and leave the
   dirty work to us.