An excellent question...
...posed by MGen (ret'd) Lewis Mackenzie:
If you add up the total regular army troops available to NATO, it comes to roughly 2.24 million soldiers. All we need in Afghanistan to reinforce the troops currently in theatre and win this thing is half of one per cent of that figure.
Where the hell are they?
posted by Babbling Brooks at 11:32 a.m.
9 Comments:
Lew makes some really good points, but the the Euros will question why Canada, the country with the worst record of Defense/NATO funding of all member states as measured by funding as a percent of GDP, can now point fingers.
40+ years of under funding DND has some political impacts.
This is one of them.
At least the current government is starting the turn around . . . kudos.
Which makes their lack of commitment ok how again Fred?
To follow up on this...
Our friends in Europe have some pretty poor memories.
To France: How many soldiers died in France from Canada, the US and the UK in the 1940s? How many soldiers have you provided to Afghanistan?
To Germany: How much military manpower did it take to prevent the german language from adopting a more cyrillic alphabet? How many soldiers have you provided to Afghanistan?
because lack of commitment cuts both ways Cam.
Tough to have your thrown stones taken seriously when you have been the leader in glass housing for forty years. Seriously weakens the argument and our moral imperative.
For better or worse it is how international diplomacy works. The Euros are masters at it
As per the short memories . . .agreed.
Robin Williams says it best . .
3w.youtube.com/watch?v=Tc78yPv_ztM
Thanks for the laugh Fred - I hadn't seen that one!
Again, how does it ok.
You're doing what you always do, mixing up two things as if they are the same.
There is thing 1: Canada hasn't spent enough money on defense
and then there is thing 2: The European members of NATO are not doing enough in Afghanistan
One can be true without the other being untrue.
Basically you're saying that it's ok that lots of Canadians get killed, that the European members of NATO don't supply combat troops, because democratically elected politicians in Canada made defense allocation decisions that didn't fund the military to a certain percentage of GNP.
if you play golf . . . google
3w.youtube.com/watch?v=6X04wZpqx3U
Don't have any coffee or liquids in process at the time or else you will be buying a new keyboard.
Cameron,
Wow . . . interesting interpretation.
but one more try . . . the comment was about Lew's article. I'm just pointing our negotiating position, our ability to persuade, to cajole, to convince our Euro nation brothers to step up to the plate NOW is a very poor because of our track record.
You know . . . "people who live in glass houses . . "
Fred, Cam, I think you're both right. I think the Euros should put more troops on the ground, regardless of our past imbalances in contribution to collective security, because it's the right thing to do. But I recognize that Canada's past performance makes it difficult to make that argument in real life, as valid as it is.
Having said that, even though we didn't spend enough in past decades, there are a lot of tombstones in Europe with maple leaves on them. And I don't recall the West Germans having any bases on Canadian soil to defend us from the Soviets.
I think we can, and should make the argument, and if anyone is stupid enough to say they carried us through the Cold War, ask how many of their soldiers died defending Canadian territory and lives.
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