Achtung, Baby!

Though it isn't really war,
We're sending fifty thousand more,
To help save Vietnam from Vietnamese
--Lyndon Johnson Told the Nation,
Tom Paxton

Give Ireland back to the Irish
Don't make them have to take it away
--Give Ireland Back to the Irish,
Paul McCartney
__________

Should NATO share the burden in Afghanistan? Defense Secretary Robert Gates said at the Munich Conference on Security Policy, "We must not -- we cannot -- become a two-tiered alliance of those who are willing to fight and those who are not." This would "effectively destroy the alliance" (NATO's Afghan Stumbles.)

Why should NATO share the burden in Afghanistan? Did the U.S. consult with NATO or line up support before invading that particular rock pile? Does NATO have any reason to get involved in Afghanistan? What makes the U.S. mess a concern for the NATO alliance?

NATO is not a strike arm of U.S. policy. It is a defensive alliance that was not envisioned as a power projecting entity. Imagine Bundeswehr Panzer grenadiers fighting in Afghanistan -- clearly a Hitlerian wet dream. Does the U.S. or any world leader really want Germans involved in foreign militaristic ventures for any conceivable purpose? It is yet another Sam Kinison moment: People, wake up, here.

The WaPo and others contend that NATO has an important role, but it is time to question this piece of conventional wisdom. Why should there be a military alliance of democracies in Europe? To what purpose? Against whom are they allied?

What is the threat? Who is the wolf at the door?

"Americans are accustomed to thinking of the Afghan war as a Taliban uprising supported from havens in Pakistan. In reality, we are seeing a broad, borderless, regional revolt in the Pashtun tribal belt, two-thirds of which lies in Pakistan. In southern Afghanistan, the Taliban is pressing to retake Kandahar and other areas. In eastern Afghanistan, the Taliban are more internationalized -- influenced by Pakistan and al-Qaeda -- and seek both to maintain the havens and take terrorist shots at Western Europe and America. In the semi-autonomous tribal regions of Pakistan, large madrassa facilities feed a radicalism with global ambitions of murder -- and radical tribal leaders put increasing pressure on settled areas."

What is the war in Afghanistan? We must cut the hyperbole to arrive at the reality. Assuming that all these words are true, why is the reaction always the same? Military, military, military. That mantra is a failure.

Militarism caused WWI, WWII, Korea and RVN, and is doing the same job in Iraq and Afghanistan. Unless one is completely deluded, or has eyes like Mr. Magoo, that option is as ineffective now as it has always been. Military reactions are usually the problem, not the solution.

Are the Taliban really providing a regional revolt? If they are, what are they revolting against? Could it be the U.S. freely bombing and killing within their borders? It is their country, and isn't that what democracy is all about? Let the Afghans choose what they want.

If NATO and the U.S. haven't alleviated the problem to date, then that should tell us something beyond the meaningless rhetoric that supports this Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©).

If every Taliban and al-Qaeda member were killed tonight, the conflict would not end. If killing were the answer, let us repudiate the Nuremberg trials, re-institute the SS and turn the Germans loose.