Article

2004-03-15 Europe

Archived material is restricted to Rantburg regulars and members. If you need access email fred.pruitt=at=gmail.com with your nick to be added to the members list. There is no charge to join Rantburg as a member.

Posted by Sherry 2004-03-15 1:51:56 PM|| || Front Page|| [11128 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 At about the same time, the Greek government, after receiving various terrorist threats and finding a bomb at a Citibank office, assured potential Olympic visitors that NATO will, after all, participate in ensuring its security. This is Orwellian. Both the government and the citizenry since September 11 have displayed nothing but opposition to American and NATO efforts in Afghanistan (no need to mention Iraq), and expressed real venom toward the United States itself?part of the ongoing fallout for its NATO-led operations against fellow Orthodox Slobodan Milosevic and his reign of terror in Bosnia and Serbia.

...Actually, IMHO the reason the Greeks are so eager to bring NATO in on the security is because when something hits the fan, they'll have a scapegoat...

Mike

Posted by Mike Kozlowski 2004-3-15 2:07:58 PM|| 2004-3-15 2:07:58 PM|| Front Page Top

#2 Screw the Olympics, screw Old Europe... let's move the UN HQ to Paris already and get this thing over with. "No American blood for wine, cheese, chocalate or fast cars!" sez I.

I'm pissed, as all VRWCers should be today. We should all be well-nigh fed up with taking hits from so-called friends when they get the crap beat outta them by the neighborhood bully.

Isolationism, as inherently stupid as it is, begins to sound a little more palatable. I hope that feeling passes quickly.

Posted by geezer 2004-3-15 2:15:54 PM|| 2004-3-15 2:15:54 PM|| Front Page Top

#3 With everything we've seen over the last couple of years, you really do have to wonder how long NATO would have held together if 2,000 Russian tanks had come charging through the Fulda Gap, say in 1980 before Reagan's military buildup.

Posted by Matt 2004-3-15 2:18:34 PM|| 2004-3-15 2:18:34 PM|| Front Page Top

#4 Matt - why would they have needed tanks?

Posted by B 2004-3-15 2:24:21 PM|| 2004-3-15 2:24:21 PM|| Front Page Top

#5 It is high time that NATO be left to wither on the vine. The original purpose of the organization was to stop soviet expansion. Done!
Even when the threat to west europe was at it hieghtest the eurotrash didn't try to provide for thier own defense. The american cowboy was always there. Let them pay for thier own defense and still try and keep thier bloated social programs. Or they can just appease and pay tribute.
Collective security???I say bullshit - only when it suits the eurotrash. The implementation of article 5 after 9-11 was a joke. Take our forces out of europe and put them where they will do some good in our war terror. Let the chamberlin's of europe appease these islamo fascists (eruope does have a long history of appeasing and tolerating tryants and facists) deal with it. They are dillusional if they think that terror attacks are related to supporting the US. The West is hated for larger reasons and in the islamo fascist view europe is just as guilty. So let them go on thier own and suffer the consquences. The United States needs to be just a little more isolationists and more self reliant.

Posted by Dan 2004-3-15 2:31:07 PM|| 2004-3-15 2:31:07 PM|| Front Page Top

#6 geez, isolationism in itself isn't really stupid; it's how one executes or implements it that makes it stupid or not. I'd advocate global markets, commerce and trade while stepping back from "foreign military entanglements".

Posted by Jarhead 2004-3-15 2:32:23 PM|| 2004-3-15 2:32:23 PM|| Front Page Top

#7 Boy, noone gives it to you straight like VDH.
You just know he's right, even though what he says is like getting a wet mop in the face.
The US is basically in this alone, which is OK--we can handle it if we'll just stay united and keep our resolve.
But after all we've done for Europe--my God!--at great expense, for decades and with very little thanks.
Screw NATO and I, for one, would like to see the U.S. pull out of the Olympics for starters.
(They were kind of a UN-style circle jerk anyway.)

Posted by Jennie Taliaferro 2004-3-15 3:07:24 PM|| [http://www.greatestjeneration.com] 2004-3-15 3:07:24 PM|| Front Page Top

#8
Jarhead: I dunno. The longer this goes on, the more we carry the war with only lip service from Europe, the more I'm thinking in terms of procurators and praetors and such. It's a pretty good racket if you can pull out of a war against civilization and still expect the benefits. You get to make faces and call names at the stoopid Americans, secure in the knowledge that for their own good they won't let the Islamists quite overthrow your country. When I was stationed in Germany, I can remember one fellow who had an 18-year-old son, who told me fondly that for every American in Germany that was a German who didn't have to get drafted. So now, after June, for every American who gets killed in Iraq, that's a Spaniard who potentially doesn't.

B: They'd have needed tanks because 3rd Armored Division and 11th Cav and 8th ID and 1st Armored were there, among others, exercising scenarios that involved companies taking on (and destroying) battalions. Which, by the way, actually happened when many of the same units fought GWI. I don't think most of us really, truly believed at the time that it was going to work.

Posted by Fred 2004-3-15 3:08:52 PM|| 2004-3-15 3:08:52 PM|| Front Page Top

#9 Fred: Would the Germans have fought? I assume we could have counted on the Brits. Any other likely company in the foxhole? (In my Fulda Gap hypo, that is.)

Posted by Matt 2004-3-15 3:15:09 PM|| 2004-3-15 3:15:09 PM|| Front Page Top

#10 "The US is basically in this alone, which is OK--we can handle it if we'll just stay united and keep our resolve."

Uh, Jennie... seems to me we're staying anything BUT united, thanks to a Democratic Party which considers George W. Bush more of an enemy than the terrorists.

And resolve? The number of Americans who have anything like "resolve" is dwindling fast.

Posted by Dave D. 2004-3-15 3:15:13 PM|| 2004-3-15 3:15:13 PM|| Front Page Top

#11 Dave - I disagree on the resolve part. If Bush had called for a million volunteers the week after 9/11 he would have gotten them. It's just that the people who would have volunteered never get quoted by the New York Times.

Posted by Matt 2004-3-15 3:19:46 PM|| 2004-3-15 3:19:46 PM|| Front Page Top

#12 As much as I dislike Nato, we have to stay in it. If we were to leave it, France would take it over and assert its will. The same goes for the UN - we have to stay in it if for no other reason then not letting someone else take it over. The only out for both would be to dissolve them completely. That won't happen. We are stuck dealing with our own success at creating both - just like social security here at home.

Posted by Yosemite Sam 2004-3-15 3:25:28 PM|| 2004-3-15 3:25:28 PM|| Front Page Top

#13 I'll never go for a UN hq in France! Well, maybe if you put it Paris that would work.

Lame jokes aside. US troops need to be out of western Europe. The Euros are bad ass enough to take care of themselves.

Posted by Lucky 2004-3-15 3:26:25 PM|| 2004-3-15 3:26:25 PM|| Front Page Top

#14 Let them have Nato and try to finance it, they can't even finance their own pathetic militaries.

Posted by Jarhead 2004-3-15 4:30:59 PM|| 2004-3-15 4:30:59 PM|| Front Page Top

#15 Fred, you kind of made my point. Let them do their own chores. I'd pull the hell out of Europe as well as S.Kor. Shit, let the islamonuts take europe, if the continental euros are too emasculated and impotent to handle themselves then let them fall - that's survival of the fittest imo - we'll have to smash the islamonuts sooner or later anyhow, might be easier just to pull them into europe to do it.

Posted by Jarhead 2004-3-15 4:35:48 PM|| 2004-3-15 4:35:48 PM|| Front Page Top

#16 Take heart. One year ago, Pres. Bush changed the history of the 21st century. All of the hand wringers and appeasers cannot change that. All of the politicos with their ostrich like avoidance of the Islamists war against the West cannot change that.

Iraq was the one country whose leader wanted to be King of the Arab Nation. All the programs of WMD and his encroachments on Iran and Kuwait were ends towards that. If he ever attained the "Arab Bomb" he would in effect be the leader of the Arabs. And the AQ types and the fifth column of mullahs all over the world would have been waving green banners in his honor. George Bush put a stop to that scenario. Saddam and his sons are gone. Done.

Posted by ted 2004-3-15 4:53:10 PM|| 2004-3-15 4:53:10 PM|| Front Page Top

#17 "I don't think most of us really, truly believed at the time that it was going to work." No, we didn't, but we were going to do it anyway. We used to joke about the prospect of such a "target rich environment"; black humor at its finest. FWIW, I think the German's would have fought, and fought well. Just my 2 cents worth.

Posted by Whiskey Mike 2004-3-15 5:38:26 PM|| 2004-3-15 5:38:26 PM|| Front Page Top

#18 Steven den Beste has a great quote at USS Clueless:

"(Captain's log): The people of Spain marched in the streets on Friday.

"Then they crawled on their knees into their voting booths on Sunday."

Posted by Tibor 2004-3-15 6:32:04 PM|| 2004-3-15 6:32:04 PM|| Front Page Top

#19 That also was Steven's entire post.

Gotta be a record...

Posted by Ptah 2004-3-15 7:04:11 PM|| [http://www.crusaderwarcollege.org] 2004-3-15 7:04:11 PM|| Front Page Top

14:17 TerrorHunter4Ever
08:24 Raptor
03:33 parallel
01:10 Atomic Conspiracy
23:49 Jarhead
23:39 Lucky
23:39 Jarhead
23:28 Frank Martin
23:26 Frank Martin
23:21 anymouse
23:16 Barbara Skolaut
23:13 Lucky
23:13 .com
22:55 .com
22:38 sc88
22:29 .com
22:27 Lucky
22:20 .com
22:15 Anonymous
22:13 .com
22:12 Lucky
22:10 .com
21:56 Anonymous
21:53 .com