The very well-informed Craig Murray has a great piece about this on his blog today. (HT: Mondoweiss.)
Murray’s bottom line:
- There are already deep misgivings, especially amongst the military, over the Afghan mission. There is no sign of a diminution in Afghan resistance attacks and no evidence of a clear gameplan. The military are not stupid and they can see that the Karzai government is deeply corrupt and the Afghan “national” army comprised almost exclusively of tribal enemies of the Pashtuns.
You might be surprised by just how high in Nato scepticism runs at the line that in some way occupying Afghanistan helps protect the west, as opposed to stoking dangerous Islamic anger worldwide.
So this is what is causing frost and stress inside NATO. The organisation is tied up in a massive, expensive and ill-defined mission in Afghanistan that many whisper is counter-productive in terms of the alliance aim of mutual defence. Every European military is facing financial problems as a public deficit financing crisis sweeps the continent. The only glue holding the Afghan mission together is loyalty to and support for the United States.
But what kind of mutual support organisation is NATO when members must make decades long commitments, at huge expense and some loss of life, to support the United States, but cannot make even a gesture to support Turkey when Turkey is attacked by a non-member?
Even the Eastern Europeans have not been backing the US line on the Israeli attack. The atmosphere in NATO on the issue has been very much the US against the rest, with the US attitude inside NATO described to me by a senior NATO officer as “amazingly arrogant – they don’t seem to think it matters what anybody else thinks”.
With respect to Turkey: it is perhaps now forgotten that the Turkish army supplied the “UN” forces in the Korean war with one of the most efficient and reliable contingents. At a time when the US military was in full retreat the Turks mounted an exemplary defence of their positions. It was one of the old stories learned in youth that British soldiers gave thanks that the Turks were with them, so that one flank was covered.
It is no doubt now becoming possible, in Turkey, to wonder aloud whether the Kurdish rebels are not being trained, advised or armed by those Israelis who have established bases in northern Iraq since 2003.
Bad news from Yahoo. Supposedly Edrogan will make noises, but ultimately back down because he’s buying Israeli-built drones to hunt Kurdish terrorists.
Yes, you heard it, Israel is assisting the Kurdish regime, which shelters the terrorists, who can only be fought using Israeli drones.
The Turkish people will have to take to the streets, as they did successfully when they knew Edrogan might cave in to US demands to assist the invasion of Iraq.
NATO is a terminally pointless, irrelevant, and conflicted strut-fest with no achievable aims – except half-baked advocacy of conspicuous consumption of over-priced military paraphernalia – at taxpayer expense.
It would be more accurate to describe it as a glitzy Gay Mardi Gras festival than a military alliance. If it ever gets into a scrap it’ll have to have a kind of internal civil war just to get rid of some of the ridiculously incompatible “members”.