Germans in Afghanistan

I believe the ‘soley’ refers to action in deposing governments. Even in Afghanistan Germany wanted interminable negotiations with the Taliban. On at least 3 occasions before we invaded Afghanistan there were official and very public German promouncements saying that we shouldn’t ‘rush’, that we needed to ‘exhaust all possibilities’ and other diplomatic ways of screaming STOP. Just because Germany didn’t resist as hard as they would in Iraq, doesn’t mean that they didn’t offer a high amount of resistance. The fact that they are helping in the rebuilding is great. But if Schroeder had his way the Taliban would have been removed by non-military force, which is to say in reality not at all.

I believe the ‘soley’ refers to action in deposing governments

Well believe what you like, but it’s quite visible that it doesn’t. The sentence is in the present tense.

It’s amazing how wrong-headed conservatives like Sebastian are.

The German government started to get worried as soon as September 16, 2001. CNN link .

At this point they are already using all of the classic phrases which ended up being used in 2002 and 2003.

“This is an attack on the whole of civilisation…Therefore we must react with civil means.”

“Measured response” (the classic European response which never ever works)

German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer stresses that political responses should be considered alongside military action if existing conflicts were not to be heightened.

I know we are all smart enough to be able to properly interpret Fischer suggestion here. We all know that this is a fairly sharp way of criticising military action.

“Alain Richard, the French defence minister, said the NATO move was a “political declaration” and refused to use the word war to describe the attacks on the U.S.

Germany’s Scharping also insisted: “We do not face a war.”

Nope, no war, not even when talking about Afghanistan.

September 16, 2001. The Germans didn’t resist us very much when we decided to strike in Afghanistan. But do not pretend that they wanted it.

The reuters link I usually use no longer seems to work. Germany made a half-hearted effort to force us to stay within diplomatic channels with Afghanistan. True, it was eventually brought around (mainly by the fact that we didn’t listen to the sillier arguments), but don’t mistake that for enthusiasm. I’m thrilled that Germany is helping the building of Afghanistan (heaven knows why we call it rebuilding).

Anyway, if you are going to complain about Hanson I’m sure you could find something better than carping over the world ‘solely’ by pointing out an AWACS overflight and French boats sitting around. The fact of the matter is that the US has done the fighting, and the Europeans are relieved about that. Unless you are going to argue that there was some strong sentiment that German forces should have been involved on the ground in Afghanistan during the actual invasion….? Hmm, didn’t think so.

Good grief, Sebastian, that has to be the most half-hearted attempt to prove something that I’ve seen in a loong time. Let’s see if I can summarize.

“Measured response”. You mean, as opposed to an unmeasured repsonse? Hardly a damning phrase.

“German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer stresses that political responses should be considered alongside military action.” Why, that treasonous moderate scum. How dare he consider ANYTHING alongside military action. Splutter.

The French Defense Minister “refuses” to use the word “war” to describe the action. Weeelll, there’s your smoking gun!

“September 16, 2001. The Germans didn’t resist us very much when we decided to strike in Afghanistan. But do not pretend that they wanted it.” Aha. they didn’t resist you much. Or at all. That proves your point that they were completely opposed to it.

Sebastian, I must commend you on getting double-think down to a fine art. And remember, this week the chocolate ration was increased from 20 grams to 5 grams.

Hey, if we can start interpreting people’s words in any way we want that supports our arguments as the sole burden of proof, it’s going to get interesting.

C’mon, point to a UN resolution or veto or something. There’s just GOT to be more to your argument than this.

Just for the record: the brigade-plus (5,500 personnel) ISAF force in Kabul was led for the first 18 months by the commander of the senior national contingent present… first Britain, then Turkey, then Germany. In August the Germans handed it over to NATO officially, with an overall HQ drawn from all of NATO. It has as its major military element a brigade with three battle groups (ie, battalions): Canadian, French and German. Canada currently also supplies the brigade headquarters. The overall commander on the ground is German. His second-in-command and brigade commander are both Canadians.

I’m not ungrateful. I’m thrilled that they are doing something. But 5,500 troops isn’t very many so I don’t think you need to go overboard about the amazing stuff they are doing either.

And none of this changes the fact that even in Afghanistan Germany never would have put actual troops in play during the invasion. And France had minor air support, which we couldn’t even rely on because they would refuse to provide covering fire when requested by ground troops. As mentioned above, the NATO forces in question don’t even approach the US commitment to Kosovo, and they have to rely on us for logistical support. Maybe it is difficult for Germany to place troops, but frankly they aren’t placing many in the scheme of things. I think that is really part of the problem. Many European governments seem to think that token help somehow entitles them to full decision-making participation. (Though that is more regularly a French failing than a German one.) When Germany can regularly help out as much as Australia they can complain about not getting enough gratitude.

Stu, if you think that most diplomacy gets carried out at the UN Resolution level, you are sadly mistaken. Last I heard, Germany can’t veto in the UN. So asking me to point out a German veto is a bit much.

Sebastian Holsclaw at January 13, 2004 05:52 PM

I guess that the American government got what it was looking for in the decades following WWII, an essentially pacific Germany. The fact that the Germans aren’t going to turn around on a dime and start supporting all American foreign “interventions” must be galling to conservatives. But, the fact is that the American gov’t got what it was looking for.

Sebastian,

The us commitment in Kosovo is around 2500 troops and the presence in Bosnia is around 1500.

So the Nato presence in afghanistan is larger.

Why the obsession with France & Germany? What about China, India or even Canada and Mexico?

Come on, guys, where’s the love for Togo and Benin?

But seriously, the Bush position of denigrating the capability of the allies on one day but trumpeting their involvement on the next may be expedient in the short run, but it has consequences.

If you’re willing to bear those consequences and the risks associated with them, just admit it.

Well, calling what he writes a joke is perhaps a little strong, but he has really only had two ideas of any value.

The first was that in Greek warfare people fought to protect their land as a largely symbolic space, rather than as a genuinely productive area; the Greeks only had three major crops, being olives, vines, and wheat, and attacks on the crops could only seriously damage one of the three, being the wheat.

Unfortunately, the ancient sources are quite open about the fact that this is exactly what enemies attacked, so his claim is hardly new. What’s more, it’s not as if the Greeks got a mere third of their calories from wheat and two thirds from wine and olive oil! Attacks on crops really threatened Greek states.

Secondly, Hanson generated the most compelling picture of Greek battle ever in ‘The Western Way of War’. Unfortunately, in his determination to believe there was a ‘Greek way of war’, which inspired and indeed inspires our way of war, he mistook his map for the territory.

It looks like Greek states fought in many different ways at different times in their history, with different martial philosophies and expectations. Contrary to the central belief of Hanson’s book, and everything he’s written since, when the Greeks spoke of battle, they hardly ever meant a clear pitched battle fought by heavily armed farmers who would not cease fighting until the result of the battle was no longer in doubt. There was no ‘Greek way of war’; ancient Greece was a school of war.

Hanson put forward the latter thesis in 1989; since then he has merely rehashed these flawed arguments again and again, allowing no new ideas in, and refusing even to consider that his theories might not perfectly reflect the realities of ancient warfare.

His views on modern warfare are grounded wholly in his misconceptions of Antiquity.

Hanson is no worse than the European politicians who openly equate Bush with Hitler. The Germans may well have the largest number of troops in Afghanistan but I’d bet the number is lower than the number of US troops in Germany (still). As for their ‘sophisticated’ way of dealing with thugs – Milosivic would still be filling his mass graves if it weren’t for the ‘naive’ Americans (again)!

Séan a mhic,

there are doubtless many more US troops in Germany than German troops in Afghanistan. I think you will find, though, that the missions are rather different. (I don’t think the GIs are guarding the mayor of Heidelberg, for example).

I really should stop, but:

if conservatives think anything short of a complete war in Afghanistan “just would not have worked” to solve the al queda problem…

then they are either extremely extremely extremely sure of this prediction, or they ascribe very very very little value to the 1000-3000 innocent Afghans killed. Which is it?

“Conservatives really are masterful predictors of counterfactual history. Throw in a bunch of assertions about welfare, minorities, frivolous lawsuits, and repressive regulations, and you really have the whole steaming pile of cr*p that is popular conservative political idealogy. In my opinion, of course.”

What crap. We don’t have to spin counterfactual webs. The UN had its chance for 12 years with Saddam. He remained firmly in power the whole time. France, Germany and Russia gave up in January 2002 when they suggested that the UN should remove sanctions and all relations to be normalized with Iraq.

Peaceful international pressure did nothing in Kosovo except let thousands of civilians get slaughtered.

Peaceful international pressure hasn’t helped much against Mugabe either, but that might be because the French prefer to invite him to their parties.

That is actual history. No counterfactuals need. But feel free to continue ignoring it.