| Submit your comments on this article | |
| Afghanistan | |
| Gates Warns Europe on Afghan Danger | |
| 2008-02-10 | |
| Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates issued a stark warning Sunday to the people of Europe, saying that their safety from terrorist attack by Islamic extremists is directly linked to NATOÂ’s success in stabilizing Afghanistan. After weeks of calling on alliance governments to send more combat troops and trainers to Afghanistan, Mr. Gates made his case directly to populations across the continent in a keynote address to the Munich Conference on Security Policy, an international security conference. Mr. Gates summoned the memory of Sept. 11, 2001, to say that Europe is at risk of becoming victim to attacks of the same enormity.
In a hall filled with government officials, legislators and policy analysts from around the world, Mr. Gates added: “So now I would like to add my voice to those of many allied leaders on the continent and speak directly to the people of Europe. The threat posed by violent Islamic extremism is real and it is not going to go away.” Mr. Gates cited terrorist attacks in Madrid, London, Istanbul, Amsterdam, Paris and Glasgow, and said that other attacks, some complex, had been disrupted before they could be carried out in Belgium, Germany and Denmark and in airliners over the Atlantic. “Just in the last few weeks, Spanish authorities arrested 14 Islamic extremists in Barcelona suspected of planning suicide attacks against public transport systems in Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, and Britain,” he said. “I am not indulging in scare tactics,” Mr. Gates stated. “Nor am I exaggerating either the threat or inflating the consequences of a victory for the extremists. Nor am I saying that the extremists are 10 feet tall.” He said the task facing Europe, the United States and allies around the world “is to fracture and destroy this movement in its infancy — to permanently reduce its ability to strike globally and catastrophically, while deflating its ideology.” The “best opportunity as an alliance to do this,” he stated, “is in Afghanistan.” Mr. Gates said that some terrorist cells in Europe are funded and receive inspiration from abroad. “Many who have been arrested have had direct connections to Al Qaeda,” he said. “Some have met with top leaders or attended training camps abroad. Some are connected to Al Qaeda in Iraq.” He said that the Barcelona terrorist cell appeared to have links with a terrorist network commanded by extremists in Pakistan who are thought to be affiliated with the Taliban and Al Qaeda and have been blamed for the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. While many NATO governments “appreciate the importance of the Afghan mission, European public support for it is weak,” Mr. Gates said. “Many Europeans question the relevance of our actions and doubt whether the mission is worth the lives of their sons and daughters.” But they “forget at our peril that the ambition of Islamic extremists is limited only by opportunity,” he added. Mr. Gates said that in Afghanistan, “the really hard question the alliance faces is whether the whole of our effort is adding up to less than the sum of its parts.” In specific policy initiatives, Mr. Gates called for a common set of training standards for every soldier and civilian deployed to Afghanistan, and for the appointment of a high-level European to serve as civilian administrator to coordinate international assistance. Echoing U.S. lessons from the exhausting effort to suppress insurgents and terrorists in Iraq after the swift invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, Mr. Gates said NATO must better coordinate military operations and civilian reconstruction and “put aside any theology that attempts clearly to divide civilian and military operations. It is unrealistic.” During a lively question-and-answer period after the speech, a member of the Russian Parliament, Alexey Ostrovskiy, asked Mr. Gates whether the blame for Al Qaeda did not lie at the feet of the U.S. intelligence community for funding the mujahedeen in Afghanistan who resisted the Soviet occupation during the 1980s. Many of those anti-Soviet fighters went on to become Islamic extremists and members of the Taliban or Al Qaeda. “After that, when the Soviet troops left, for all intents and purposes, people who were created by you were idle,” said Mr. Ostrovskiy. “If we bear a particular responsibility for the role of the mujahedeen and Al Qaeda growing up in Afghanistan, it has more to do with our abandonment of the country in 1989 than our assistance of it in 1979,” Mr. Gates answered. | |
| Posted by:lotp |
| #3 COUNTERTERRORISM BLOG > MICHAEL CHERTOFF'S BIGGEST FEAR - TERRORISTS ENTERING THE US FROM CANADA. More from Canada than Mahico. Giving Putin = Russia the reason to save Canada by nuking it [Tacnuke? Strategic?] vv RUSS NEW ANTI-NUKE/WMD TERROR DOCTRINE = "conventional aggression"??? |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2008-02-10 22:25 |
| #2 In specific policy initiatives, Mr. Gates called for a common set of training standards for every soldier and civilian deployed to Afghanistan |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2008-02-10 22:09 |
| #1 A no brainer that Eurweenies will never get. |
| Posted by: Icerigger 2008-02-10 16:24 |