At 10:47 8-2-02 -0500, Gautam Mukunda wrote:
>Brett:
>The US has global responsibilities, yes. Does it have to do it all by
>itself? No.
>
>[snipping stuff about other ways this could have been fought]
>
>Me:
>No. All of that is, well, just not true. We do have to do these things
>alone because no one else even _begins_ to have the capacity to assist us.
>If you'd like to think that Australia does, Brett, go right ahead, but it
>doesn't. At all.
Excuse me? The US had to do their fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan *alone*?
I think other countries will disagree with you.
Several countries joined the US in the war against Iraq. I never heard the
US say "we do not want your help, just stay home". (Detail: The Netherlands
deployed mobile radar installations and five naval vessels; total cost of
the operation: NLG 462 million).
The British sent their troops to help the US in Afghanistan. NATO even
invoked Article V for the first time so they could help. I never heard the
US tell Great Britain "keep your troops at home, we do not want them here".
I never heard the US tell its NATO friends "nice of you to invoke Article
V, but do not bother to help us, we do not need your help".
>We buy American equipment pretty much exclusively because the equipment
>sold outside the US isn't the same. It's not even playing in the same
>world any more.
There is of course a very good reason that other countries have military
hardware that is inferior to US military hardware: money. Unlike the US,
most countries can not afford to spend billions on their defense. Heck,
there are countries whose *entire* annual budget is less than what the US
spends on its military alone.
>Yes, we did have to go it alone in Afghanistan and (earlier) in Iraq.
>When the NATO powers initially tried to invoke Article V of the North
>Atlantic Treaty, the Pentagon asked the Administration to prevent them
>from doing so (it very correctly refused). It felt that with some very
>limited excpetions (the British and Australian SAS and SBS, still the
>best SpecOps forces in the world, and British intelligence help) other
>people's militaries would just _get in the way_.
You sure know how to make others feel appreciated. Why did the US call on
other countries (pretty much the rest of the world) to join the war against
Iraq, if those others would just "get in the way"? Was it because they
could make a valuable contribution, or was it because the US needed cannon
fodder? ("Hey, why let the Iraqis kill US troops if we can get someone else
to catch the bullets.")
>I'm not trying to insult Britain or Australia or the European powers. This
>isn't about courage, or smarts, or anything like that. It's about money.
>We have a multilateral military alliance where only one of the countries
>involved has an effective military.
Since IYO non-US forces (with a few exceptions) are ineffective, using
inferior material and only "get in the way", why does the US not bail out
of NATO? Since the US is allegedly doing everything alone, it does not need
the others.
I know you do not want to be insulting, but your attitude could very well
be seen as insulting. Your post leaves the impression that for the United
States, other countries' soldiers are just cannon fodder.
Jeroen
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