Word: nato
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...after nearly three months of debate. Following Obama's expected speech to the nation about his plan, General Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, will testify before Congress with other members of Obama's national-security team. They'll have to convince skeptical Americans--as well as NATO allies at a Dec. 7 meeting--that Afghan President Hamid Karzai is a solid partner in the war effort. That's a daunting task given the allegations of corruption enveloping him, including a disputed August election that gave him a second five-year term...
...strategy calls for a quick deployment of not just 30,000 American troops, but also 10,000 or so NATO troops, to the most volatile parts of Afghanistan. We call on Canada and our European allies to heed the American call and shoulder a more proportionate responsibility for our mutual security...
...what was the reaction of the foreign press, in particular some of our NATO allies? Afghanistan is ultimately a very backward country, and as long as it doesn’t become a big base for al Qaeda, it has no real bearing on Europeans’ interests. It is more difficult for an American to speak that truth. We inflate the danger due to the shock of 9/11. We also started the war, so we naturally have a greater stake in seeing it through. Europeans clearly don’t feel that. They help us, but there?...
...hard to know if countries will meet these goals. Yesterday, European NATO ministers met in Brussels to discuss the surge and whether they can be counted on to add to the 42,000 NATO troops already in Afghanistan. Rome is reportedly ready to commit 1,000 more troops in addition to the 2,750 that already there, the largest increase pledged since Obama announced the surge. Gordon Brown pledged another 500 to bring the British tally up to 9,500, the biggest commitment after America’s. Warsaw will increase its contingent from...
...than the 21,000 troops he sent last March, whose presence didn't seem to improve the situation on the ground at all. "Look, the fact that there were increased casualties this year I think is to be expected from increased engagement by our forces." True enough, but the NATO coalition lost ground to the Taliban this year, by Obama's own admission. And the President could only come up with speed of deployment and a clearer sense of mission as strategic game changers. Later, when I asked him about what changes he had ordered for the training...