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| Europe |
| Red America, Blue Europe: Europe Learns the Wrong Lessons |
| 2005-09-13 |
| This is an except from an The American Enterprise (current issue) article The pattern stretches back to Korea For evidence that obstruction of the U.S. is more important to many European elites than making progress in the world’s most dangerous flashpoints, look no farther than Afghanistan. The Afghan war was not controversial in Old Europe. It was universally agreed that the Taliban was a blight on central Asia, and that the al-Qaeda cells incubating in Afghanistan were a menace to the entire globe. Europeans accepted the urgent necessity of rooting out both entities militarily, and then rebuilding the Afghan government and civil society. But once U.S. forces had done the dirty work of eliminating Afghanistan’s fanatical ruling cliques, did our European allies live up to their promises to help update that nation’s infrastructure, train its police, build up its courts, revive its social sector and economy? Scandalously, no. As we’ve been pointing out for two years (see TAE’s January/February 2004 issue, SCAN), the Europeans immediately fell way behind on their financial pledges. Their troop commitments were not met. The German promise to train the Afghan police became a joke. European offers to reconstruct the justice system went nowhere. In all of these areas, America had to step into the breach to help suffering Afghans, and stave off disorder and a re-emergence of terror cells. Truth be told, continental Europeans have been making themselves scarce during times of crisis for more than two generations. Their current claim is that lack of a U.N. mandate is what has prevented Europe from standing shoulder to shoulder with the U.S. since the 9/11 attacks. But the Old World’s failure to make any proportionate contribution to the war on terror is actually part of a long historical pattern. Consider their response the last time a large U.N.-commanded force went to war—in Korea. After North Korea invaded South Korea in 1950, the U.N. responded militarily. Of the 340,000 troops sent under U.N. control, how many of these do you suppose were European? About 5 percent. In the crunch, only Britain provided meaningful help, sending 14,198 soldiers at the Korean War’s peak. The next biggest European contribution? Greece, with 1,263. France followed, providing all of 1,119 troops. The U.S., meanwhile, provided more than 300,000 fighters. Do the math and you’ll see something interesting: The Korean War alliance included 16 nations, and America supplied 88 percent of the military manpower. The Iraq War coalition included 32 nations, and 85 percent of the G.I.s were Americans. (Poland, Holland, and the Ukraine each contributed more soldiers to the Iraq War coalition than the French did to the Korean War.) See a pattern? More at link |
| Posted by:Captain America |
| #14 Rather than being a military discussion, or an invitation to Frog bashing, it is an appraisal of the current direction of Europe... It *is* a good article; both thoght provoking and depressing. Definitely a must read. But can we still have Frog bashing? And some whale curry, too? ( Apologies to both JFM and Shamu ) |
| Posted by: SteveS 2005-09-13 13:26 |
| #13 Phereque Omineger4095 writes: IIRC those were mostly French Foreign Legionaires I am sorry to disappoint you but the Bataillon de Corée was not Foreign Legion. It was formed from volunteers of regular french units. Commanded by a living legend of Free France who had accepted to go down four ranks (from Corps general to lieutenant colonel) in order to command it. The batalion got three American Presidential citations |
| Posted by: JFM 2005-09-13 13:26 |
| #12 RC I wouldn't want to interfere on your constitutional rights to French bashing. :-) Just that I don't like when it is done on a post that I had posted to put the things in perspective, still more when IMHO your bashing is unfair to the people I was talking about. |
| Posted by: JFM 2005-09-13 10:48 |
| #11 RC At that time the French government supported America and France was about the only nation providing state of the art weaponry to Israel. Times have changed for the worse. |
| Posted by: JFM 2005-09-13 10:18 |
| #10 IIRC those were mostly French Foreign Legionaires who were to a significant number former members of the Wehrmarcht. And to a still more significant part former members of Free France: After the campaign of Narvik part of the Foreign Legion was in the UK when France fell. Since their officers (all French) rallied Free France the privates and NCOs followed. I don't know what happenned with those Foreign Legionnaires who had been born Germans: were they interned? did they desert? or did they end at Bir Hakeim shooting at Rommel's troops? BTW, since I mentionned the French veterans of Korea in GM101, I don't remember any mention of them being of the Foreign Legion or of the presence of people of the Foreign Legion in it. I could be wrong however |
| Posted by: JFM 2005-09-13 10:09 |
| #9 JFM, no offense to you or to other Frenchmen who support the US, but when I look at the actions of the French government, I see them supporting the bloody-handed dictators over the US. |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2005-09-13 09:59 |
| #8 JFM. not all of us are French bashers. I for one regularly point out that we need France to show us 'the other (better) way'. Nuclear power and vaccines come to mind, but I am sure there are many others. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2005-09-13 09:52 |
| #7 Mr Crawford For obvious reasons I would be glad if you didn't use my posts for French bashing. One of the points of my posts was to highlight the error (mostly during the Clinton administrations) of encouraging the transformation of the EU from a mere free-trade zone into something political. As the centrists in Europe, not only in France, began to dream about Europe becoming the next dominat power, the logical consequence was challenging the defending champion. European far left ver hated America. Same for the far right (in case of France we have to add the gaullists, but the bruises inflicted on De Gaulle by the Roosevelt administration played a role) but America could count on the moderates. Thanks to the EU dream now the moderates hate America at least as much as the others. |
| Posted by: JFM 2005-09-13 09:38 |
| #6 RC, correct. Tthe time will come when the big questions are, when should we loosen green card restricitions on Europeans, and when will we start granting political asylum. |
| Posted by: Mrs. Davis 2005-09-13 09:12 |
| #5 We should prepare to remove all our forces And offer to shelter anything of cultural signifigance that can be moved. |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2005-09-13 08:57 |
| #4 France followed, providing all of 1,119 troops. IIRC those were mostly French Foreign Legionaires who were to a significant number former members of the Wehrmarcht. |
| Posted by: Phereque Omineger4095 2005-09-13 08:44 |
| #3 The entire article should be read. Rather than being a military discussion, or an invitation to Frog bashing, it is an appraisal of the current direction of Europe of which diplomatic and military impotence is only one dimension. Reading it became more and more depressing. The conclusion speaks to how we need to work with our allies in Europe to help it revive. But Europe's path to becoming the next Russia is clear. Soon what we today see as dhimmitude will become Islamization as westerners die off and muslims inherit the ruins. We should prepare to remove all our forces from Europe before they are caught up in its next round of pointless slaughter. At a certain point our forces become hostages in Europe's civil war. If the Europeans will not defend themselves, we should not delude them into believeing we will do it for them. Nor should we leave our troops in the middle on a fool's errand. We should make it clear to the UK that they face a choice, remain in the Free World or join Europe. Then leave the Europeans to lie in the bed they've made. |
| Posted by: Mrs. Davis 2005-09-13 08:21 |
| #2 That, and the French have never met a bloody-handed dictator whose boot they won't lick. |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2005-09-13 07:46 |
| #1 To say the truth the French (1) had already their hands full of trouble in Vietnam (2). The other factor was the strength of the Communist Party after the Resistance (3) who limited the options of the government (1) at that time the "Atlantist party" was strong, today it has disappeared. The atlantist political formations have become strong EU proponents and, since they dream of the EU replacing America as world leader, hate it. (2) When they returned to Vietnam, the French "Koreans" became the most combative of the French troops since they had seen communism in action. For the record, when the Vietminh anihilated the Groupemnt Mobile 101 (portrayed at the start of "We were soldiers") a company of Korea veterans managed to break the encirclement so it wasn't anihilated like the remainder of the Groupement (3) By the end of the War, the Communist Party was getting 30% of the votes. That was due in no small part to the Nazi habit of attributting every act of sabotage to the Communists, whatever the real authors so people began to believe they were the only real resistants (also booming makes for better propaganda than passing info to the allies, other resistance movements feared endangering civilians they couldn't protect agaisnt germain repraisals) and forgot their german-friendly attitude before invasion of Soviet Union. |
| Posted by: JFM 2005-09-13 04:16 |