.
The Brits are going home.
Forty thousand marched in beside the Americans. Only
7,100 remain; 1,600 will be heading home by Easter.
By August, the Danish force of 470 is to be
withdrawn, as is the tiny Lithuanian unit. South Korea
has 2,200 troops in the Kurdish north. Though they
rarely leave base, 1,100 are to depart by August, the
rest by year`s end.
The Italians are gone. The Spanish pulled out after
the Madrid bombings. Ukraine`s 1,600 have departed. The
Japanese have gone. Declaring the war
"unjust and wrong," Slovakia`s new prime
minister just ordered home his country`s contingent of
110 engineers.
Only the Americans are going deeper in. Aussies
excepted, the "coalition of the willing" is no
longer willing.
In Afghanistan, Americans, and Brits, Canadians and
Dutch fight, as Germans, French and Italians do
"reconstruction." In World War I, France, Italy and
Germany lost 4 million men. In Afghanistan and Iraq, the
three together have probably not lost 50.
Prime Minister Romano Prodi resigned Wednesday, when
his plan to stay in Afghanistan and enlarge a U.S. base
in Italy, lest refusal be seen as
"a hostile act toward the U.S.A.," was rejected
in the Senate.
Vice President Cheney hails Tony Blair`s announced
withdrawal of British troops as a sign of success. Yet,
he says the Pelosi-Murtha plan to withdraw U.S. troops
would only
"validate the al-Qaida strategy."
The White House says the British pullout is an
affirmation of our partnership, but the Brits could have
sent those 1,600 to Baghdad or Anbar. They did not.
The Brits are leaving with mission unaccomplished.
They are being shot at and mortared every day in Basra.
Tribal and Shia militias have not been disarmed. The
Sunni are being ethnically cleansed from the south.
Militant Shia want the Brits gone, so they can take
over.
The British people are bridling at the cost in blood
and money of a war that destroyed Tony Blair, who is
weeks away from resigning as prime minister. One British
historian said at year`s end he has never seen such levels of
anti-Americanism in his country.
There is a larger meaning to all this, and Americans
must come to terms with it. NATO is packing it in as a
world power. NATO is little more than a U.S. guarantee
to pull Europe`s chestnuts out of the fire if Europeans
encounter a fight they cannot handle, like an insurgency
in Bosnia or Kosovo. NATO has one breadwinner, and 25
dependents.
At the end of the Cold War, internationalists like
Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana declared,
"NATO must go out of area, or go out of business."
What Lugar meant was, with the Soviet threat lifted
from Europe, NATO must shoulder more of the global
burden.
But the Balkan crises of the 1990s showed that
Europeans are not even up to policing their own
playground. The Americans had to come in, gently push
them aside and do the job. The message Europe is today
sending to America, with the withdrawals from Iraq and
the refusal of Italy, Germany and France to fight in
Afghanistan:
"We are not going out
of area again. If you Americans want to play empire, go
right ahead. We will not again send our sons overseas to
fight in regions of the world from which we withdrew
half a century ago. You`re on your own."
Where does this leave NATO? This leaves NATO as
little more than a U.S. guarantee to go to war for the
nations of Europe, while Europeans can be freeloading
critics of U.S. policy around the world.
NATO is an expensive proposition. We maintain dozens
of bases and scores of thousands of troops from Norway
to the Balkans, from Spain to the Baltic republics, from
the Black Sea to the Irish Sea.
What do we get for this? Why do we tax ourselves to
defend rich nations who refuse to defend themselves? Is
the security of Europe more important to us than to
Europe?
In the early years of World Wars I and II, Europeans
implored us to come save them from the Germans. We did.
In the early Cold War, Europeans welcomed returning GIs
who stood guard in the Fulda Gap.
Now, with the threat gone, the gratitude is gone.
Now, with their welfare states eating up their wealth,
their peoples aging, their cities
filling up with
militant migrants, they
want America to continue defending them, as they sit
in moral judgment on how we go about it.
This isn`t an alliance. This isn`t a partnership.
Time to split the blanket. If they won`t defend
themselves, let them, as weaker nations have done to
stronger states down through the ages, pay tribute.
Sixty years after World War II, 15 years after the
Cold War, Europe`s defense should become Europe`s
responsibility.
COPYRIGHT
CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
Patrick J. Buchanan needs
no introduction to VDARE.COM
readers; his book
State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and
Conquest of America,
can be ordered from
Amazon.com.
