Who'd want to be our ally anyway?

[davefoc]

For the supporters of the administration's Iraq policy there's been a lot of ridicule and condemnation pumped out against the ally's that aren't supporting us.

My thought is that regardless of the underlying arguments for or against the administrations Iraq policy our ally's would be justified in not being too supportive based on the past actions of recent administrations.

A few examples of what I'm talking about:
1. Despite the massive support of our allies in the orginal gulf war George Bush chose to end the war unilateraly, without consulting the allies. It seemed like the guy who owned the football telling everybody that the game was over when he wanted to go home.

2. When it came to supporting NATO's efforts in Bosnia to prevent genocide the Republican led congress turned it into a political issue and tied Clintons hands. There was alot of talk about how this was a European issue and they should take care of it themselves.

3. We never seemed all that cooperative with the other allies in Afghanistan who wanted to work to rebuild Afghanistan.

So, what I'm suggesting, is that beyond the philosophical differences between the allies and the US there might be some resentment about our less than cooperative approach to past alliances which makes these countries not want to get involved in new ones with us.

[scotth]

Originally posted by davefoc
For the supporters of the administration's Iraq policy there's been a lot of ridicule and condemnation pumped out against the ally's that aren't supporting us.

My thought is that regardless of the underlying arguments for or against the administrations Iraq policy our ally's would be justified in not being too supportive based on the past actions of recent administrations.

A few examples of what I'm talking about:
1. Despite the massive support of our allies in the orginal gulf war George Bush chose to end the war unilateraly, without consulting the allies. It seemed like the guy who owned the football telling everybody that the game was over when he wanted to go home.

2. When it came to supporting NATO's efforts in Bosnia to prevent genocide the Republican led congress turned it into a political issue and tied Clintons hands. There was alot of talk about how this was a European issue and they should take care of it themselves.

3. We never seemed all that cooperative with the other allies in Afghanistan who wanted to work to rebuild Afghanistan.

So, what I'm suggesting, is that beyond the philosophical differences between the allies and the US there might be some resentment about our less than cooperative approach to past alliances which makes these countries not want to get involved in new ones with us.

I won't comment on your second point as I don't know enough about it to comment intelligently.

On point one, I will completely dissagree. I am pretty confident in my understanding that the UN "mandate" was to remove Iraqi forces from Kuwait, not to invade Iraq. The U.S. military was certainly very dissappointed to stop the show where they did. There probably alot of people around the world somewhat dissappointed as well. But, this should be a strong show of trustworthiness to many of the "allies" that are balking now. It was within our best interests to continue, but we stopped exactly as promised. Thing to remember: This was not an arbitrary decision to stop where we did, it was the agreed upon stopping place before action began.

On point 3, I have no idea what you are talking about. We are working today to rebuild that place (though, I do think we could step it up a bit). As the place becomes more stable, I think you will find tremendous amounts of aid flowing into Afghanistan. I do have some opinions on doing this intelligently if you are interested, but that is another story.

[davefoc]

Thanks for the reply scotth.

I understand your point about the UN resolution and to some degree you are doubtlessly correct. None the less the way the decision was presented to the American people and presumably the world was that George Bush had decided the goals of the war had been met and he was ending it.

Don't you think, it would have been more tactful to have had a conference with the allies and produce a joint announcement that the allies were ending the war? Weren't their soldiers in harm's way? Weren't their soldiers dieing? How'd you like to be the leader of one of those countries and announce that the American president had unilaterally decided the war was over? It comes across to me like those soldiers were dieing for America interests instead of a just cause and their own national interest.

At the time and now I think that fighting the war and leaving Hussein in place was one of the most immoral acts by any American administration in history. The choice was to not fight the war and leave Hussein in power or to fight the war and oust Hussein. There was not a moral in the middle approach But I agree that is off the point. The issue is how to end the war when apparently there were agreements in place to not get rid of Hussein. I don't see anthing about the situation that required the American president to make pompous unilateral announcements.

A quick comment on the Afghanistan point. We were explicitly not cooperating with the allies on the rebuilding of Afghanistan initially. The European powers in particular wanted to set up an organization to rebuild Afghanistan and the US wouldn't be part of it.

[scotth]

In the Gulf War, I wouldn't think we would need a meeting or a conference to do exactly what was already agreed upon.

Do you have any documentation on your Afgan assertions. I would like to look through some of that.