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France will withdraw its 200 special forces troops from Afghanistan within weeks, authorities announced Sunday.

The elite soldiers have been serving under U.S. forces in the southeast, battling Taliban and al-Qaeda militants.
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France is among the countries in ISAF that have faced heavy pressure to boost their contribution in Afghanistan in recent months, including from Canada, the United States and top NATO leaders.

France and some other countries have been accused of putting too many restrictions on their troops, including refusing to let them serve in places where most of the militant attacks are taking place.

During the past year, Afghan, Canadian, U.S., British and Dutch forces have done most of the fighting and borne most of the casualties as the insurgency intensified.

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I was actually relieved when I read this.

(*warning* What I'm about to write, may not be coherent. I'm in a very weird mental state right now and I'm just hoping what I'm about to say makes sense.)

Not only is France pulling troops out of Afghanistan, they're pulling the ones out who are screwing things up the most.

That being said, this was also making me think of something else I've heard in the news quite a bit lately...

Has anyone else noticed the extreme crowing that the chickenhawks are doing these days about their precious thug allaince (NATO) being slowly killed by an unwillingness to "do the dirty work" in the South of Afghanistan?

Well, maybe "dirty work" isn't the exact phrase the chickenhawks are saying, but as far as I'm concerned, that's what should be read between the lines when we hear people whine and moan about how no one wants to commit troops to the south of Afghanistan.

Whenever I saw someone on TV talk about the lack of willingness to commit troops to combat operations, the thing I kept thinking was "please, no one crack! Please don't allow other countries to start sending troops down to the south! What is going on down there is wrong."

But the chickenhawks kept crowing and beating the drums of war calling for more commitments to the south, and getting scared about their horrifying blunder of an imperialist adventure in Afghanistan going awry because no one wants to chip in and kill Afghans like the real macho chickenhawks in Ottawa.

So now that I see that France has decided to "stick it to the man" and pull their troops out of the war-torn south, I got to wondering...

Are the chickenhawk's concerns about NATO being slowly killed to death by apathy valid? Does anyone really believe that NATO is slowly being killed on the battlefields of Afghanistan? If so, does anyone else agree with me that NATO being kicked to the curb is a good thing?

If NATO is in fact slaughtered in Afghanistan by Afghan peasants and activists in the west, what will it be replaced with? Surely the chickenhawks will not allow NATO to die without it being replaced with something else... What do you suppose it would look like?

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Originally posted by redflag:

Are the chickenhawk's concerns about NATO being slowly killed to death by apathy valid? Does anyone really believe that NATO is slowly being killed on the battlefields of Afghanistan? If so, does anyone else agree with me that NATO being kicked to the curb is a good thing?

If NATO is in fact slaughtered in Afghanistan by Afghan peasants and activists in the west, what will it be replaced with? Surely the chickenhawks will not allow NATO to die without it being replaced with something else... What do you suppose it would look like?

Does any of that make sense?

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Yes indeed, it makes a lot of sense. Here's my take on it.

The alleged raison d'être of NATO disappeared the minute the Cold War ended. But even then, NATO was never a comfortable alliance, with France (especially, but not alone) being reluctant to cede all its sovereign powers to the U.S.-led command (remember De Gaulle's boycott of the military wing).

With the disintegration of the Soviet Union and its bloc, the U.S. fought to retain and expand NATO as an instrument of hegemony over its European "partners" and rivalry with new imperial comers (such as a newly-rebuilding Russian capitalist state). The first significant test of its new role was in Yugoslavia, where Clinton quite masterfully (I thought) rallied NATO to weaken the influence of Russia and its Serbian allies.

Now Afghanistan. What (some innocents may ask) is a "North Atlantic" coalition doing there? Same thing as in Yugoslavia - securing a sphere of influence and hegemony, ultimately with economic aims.

What I think NATO has become is an alternative United Nations, run by the U.S., without the inconvenience of a refractory General Assembly and other major powers (Russia, China, etc.) with conflicting interests.

I have no idea whether the Afghan people will bury NATO, but it is a delicious thought. It would be a historic and ironic victory, and NATO is well and truly asking for it. The NATO powers are inherently rivals, not buddies. Will Afghanistan drive a wedge between them that can't be healed?

Thanks for providing this food for thought.

[Edited by Michelle to change redflag's name]

[ 22 June 2008: Message edited by: Michelle ]

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Now Afghanistan. What (some innocents may ask) is a "North Atlantic" coalition doing there? Same thing as in Yugoslavia - securing a sphere of influence and hegemony, ultimately with economic aims.

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Originally posted by 500_Apples:
Yeah, must be the oil and diamonds Afghanistan is endowed with. Could not possibly be related to 9/11.

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So uh, what were Unocal and other energy corporations doing in Afghanistan leading up to the phoney pretext for war on the Taliban ?.

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Originally posted by unionist:

I have no idea whether the Afghan people will bury NATO, but it is a delicious thought. It would be a historic and ironic victory, and NATO is well and truly asking for it.

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Yikes.

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So uh, what were Unocal and other energy corporations doing in Afghanistan leading up to the phoney pretext for war on the Taliban ?.

According to CIA reports, they've known exactly where mullah Omar and the Taliban training schools were located all along. They're hiding out in Pakistan. They even claim to have handed Warshington the address.

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I'm sure Unocal has been in a whole lot of countries that have unfriendly governments. Not all of them have been deposed though, and it is doubtful such effort and political capital would have been expended on Afghanistan had it just been for some Unocal project. Do you know why Unocal was there? Were they prospecting? I've heard sporadic reports of a pipeline. I don't consider them very interesting. Sometimes, occam's razor works very well to explain politics. And in this case, there was no other way the world could have responded to 9/11 following the fact than a military intervention. The country watched CNN in shock, and military response was inevitable. Afghanistan is very distinctive from other countries in the international attention it gets. Preceding this military intervention, was it not more distinctive in its geopolitics than the presence of Unocal?

Could you provide evidence of these CIA reports?

[ 21 December 2006: Message edited by: 500_Apples ]

The U.S. military attacked Afghanistan, an impoverished nation that had just been through two years of drought and 20 years years of war, for the 9-11 bombing which was allegedly hatched in Berlin. But the evidence was so weak that German prosecutors had to reduce the sentence to four years for the main suspect. Tomohawk missiles were running a million bucks a piece then. You can bet Raytheon, a company the Bush family has shares in, was more than happy to fill those purchase orders.

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Originally posted by TUSK:

Yikes.

Don't put too much stock in France (once again) retreating from a war. On a positive note, at least France can be counted on to be predictable and consistent.

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Sometimes, occam's razor works very well to explain politics.

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[pendentry] May I just lodge a formal complaint against the misuse of the principle of theoretical parsimony sometimes called "Ockham's Razor"? It is not the same as the "simplest answer" or "common sense" or any of the things it is usually (as here) used to denote.

[/pedantry]

[ 21 December 2006: Message edited by: B.L. Zeebub LLD ]

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Originally posted by B.L. Zeebub LLD:
May I just lodge a formal complaint against the misuse of the principle of theoretical parsimony sometimes called "Ockham's Razor"?

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Thank you. I have been complaining about this usage for years.

[ 21 December 2006: Message edited by: cco ]

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Originally posted by arborman:
I am vicariously embarrassed when yet another moron pulls out the trope of 'France the retreaters'.

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Okay, I take it back. France has a long history of bravely buggering off though. Okay, NOW everyone was a member of the French resistance but then...

Not to mention the fact that the French are the suppliers to most of the worlds terrorists...

[ 21 December 2006: Message edited by: TUSK ]

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Originally posted by TUSK:

Not to mention the fact that the French are the suppliers to most of the worlds terrorists...

[ 21 December 2006: Message edited by: TUSK ]

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A classic case of government spin is the myth that the September 11 hijackers used “box cutters” to take control of the four planes. The tapes of calls from flight attendants and passengers, as well as the black boxes (when they were recovered) do not mention box cutters. In fact, there is a suggestion that other weapons—including acid and a gun—were used. But box cutters were a pleasing myth; these knives were approved for air travel prior to September 11. If the hijackers used them, it meant that the airports, airlines, private security, and the FAA all did their jobs. Al Qaeda used a loophole. If the terrorists used banned weapons, as some of the doomed passengers and crew said, then it means someone in authority failed. Is this a dark conspiracy on the part of federal officials? Probably not.

The transcripts that have been released to the press mention knives (which might have been box cutters) and the accounts that mention other weapons could be hysteria or hearsay, if the caller didn’t see the weapon he described. Officials doubtlessly summarized the evidence in their favor. It certainly sounds better than “we are not really sure and may never know” and is more reassuring to air passengers than “airport security failed in Boston.”

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Originally posted by TUSK:
Not to mention the fact that the French are the suppliers to most of the worlds terrorists...

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[ 22 December 2006: Message edited by: B.L. Zeebub LLD ]

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Originally posted by TUSK:

Yikes.

Don't put too much stock in France (once again) retreating from a war. On a positive note, at least France can be counted on to be predictable and consistent.

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You know, I'm not about to engage in the glorification of France, but I will say that they're doing the right thing here.

I don't know how I feel about them keeping their troops in the north doing the "reconstruction" work, but I do know that they made at least one good decision by pulling out of the south.

[ 22 December 2006: Message edited by: B.L. Zeebub LLD ]

[ 22 December 2006: Message edited by: 'lance ]

The left is strong in Germany and France today. This is really what political conservatives in the west are unhappy about. Warfiteers long for the days when fervent nationalism could be whipped up and working class conscripted to fight wars of conquest.

[ 22 December 2006: Message edited by: Fidel ]