Dutch extending Uruzgan combat mission--but ending "leading role" in 2010
I missed highlighting this when doing this earlier post:
I don't see the great significance for Canada though--if three years from now major ISAF combat forces are still required for southern Afstan--i.e. the Afghan security forces still aren't up for the main part of the fighting--then it's hard to see the ISAF mission as not failing and most participants starting to pull out. Including us should the Canadian Parliament decide to stay until 2011, likely with a reduced combat role during that period.
Also:
I wonder when our media will notice this (US defense secretary Gates is now in Afstan):
Of course the Dutch would not in the end be left with an undefended southern flank. The US, UK, Aussies or someone would step in to take our place to the extent necessary. But Canada would have shamefully let down a good country and ally that is truly "punching above its weight", I suspect in many ways as a recoil from the horrors of Srebrenica.
"Today the Dutch cabinet decided that we will make a new contribution to the ISAF mission in Uruzgan for a period of two years," Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende told reporters.Foreign affairs critic Bob Rae is perhaps being a bit Liberal with what was said--the Dutch prime minister does not appear actually to have said "no extension". Plus he said "The Netherlands will end its leading role in Uruzgan...', not that it would have no further role either there or elsewhere in Afstan.
"The Netherlands will end its leading role in Uruzgan on August 1, 2010," Balkenende said. Troops would pull out over a four-month period and would be home before December 2010...
I don't see the great significance for Canada though--if three years from now major ISAF combat forces are still required for southern Afstan--i.e. the Afghan security forces still aren't up for the main part of the fighting--then it's hard to see the ISAF mission as not failing and most participants starting to pull out. Including us should the Canadian Parliament decide to stay until 2011, likely with a reduced combat role during that period.
Also:
"The Dutch rules of engagement are much less -- if I may say so -- vigorous than the Canadians," Rae said...So what?
I wonder when our media will notice this (US defense secretary Gates is now in Afstan):
Gates has a meeting planned this month in Scotland with defense ministers of countries that have troops in Afghanistan's south, the most violent area of the country.Update: If we pull out of combat (of whatever sort) in Kandahar in 2009 Canada will be leaving The Netherlands in the lurch in Uruzgan immediately to the north. Not exactly the thing to do to people who, unlike Canadians generally, still remember vividly what we did for them during WW II.
Of course the Dutch would not in the end be left with an undefended southern flank. The US, UK, Aussies or someone would step in to take our place to the extent necessary. But Canada would have shamefully let down a good country and ally that is truly "punching above its weight", I suspect in many ways as a recoil from the horrors of Srebrenica.
posted by Mark, Ottawa at 3:24 p.m.
2 Comments:
Right. We'll admit failure and pull out. It's okay to declare war and (a) not fight at all, or (b) decide this icky-poo war thing sucks and then leave. The world will be nice to societies that declare war and don't fight, or only fight for a little while and then flee, patting themselves on the back for having given it the college try....
No... *you* may pull out. Europe may pull out. NATO may pull out. But the Taleban murdered 3000 of my people on live television, and no one -- not even Pelosi -- is talking about the US leaving. We'll leave when they're out of business. And we'll probably respect the allies that abandoned us as much and give them the same benefit of the doubt as, oh, say, Putin will give the EU. He's seen that they don't fight even when they declare open war. I have no doubt he's sharpening his knives and grinning. So is every two-bit dictator on the planet. So is every chapter of the Islamic Klu Klux Klan. And sooner or later the little dears will scream for their Yankee janissaries to 'do something.' I wonder what they will do if we treat them the way they've treated us...
Yes, the 21st century sure is shaping up to be an interesting place. I'm glad my people have shown they will defend themselves, though. So have yours. That's a scarce virtue. It may just save your arse. Don't even *talk* about casting it aside.
"The Dutch rules of engagement are much less -- if I may say so -- vigorous than the Canadians,"
I'd say that, with a few honorable exceptions, most of what used to be known as the Western Alliance is contemptibly less than vigorous.
A quick dictionary check for antonyms for vigorous turned up: frail, weak, feeble, unfit, inconstant and unreliable. All apropos.
rivenshield's comments said it much more eloquently than me. Well said, rivenshield!
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