It’s not NATO’s fight

And there’s no fight in NATO

This is an archived blog post from The Acorn.

You hear about leaked diplomatic memos, resigned assessments by British field commanders and complaints by pundits—but it is when you read reports like this one, about German commandos twiddling their thumbs for three years (yes, three years) sitting in their camps, that you know why the Taliban are getting so powerful. (linkthanks Pragmatic)

Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the foreign minister, admitted they had not been deployed “a single time” in the last three years, despite a desperate shortage of Special Forces units in the country.

Last year it emerged that Norwegian troops, fighting alongside their German allies, were forced to abandon a battle at tea-time because German pilots refused to fly emergency medical helicopters in the dark. [The Scotsman]NATO’s military presence in Afghanistan is hobbled by a spaghetti bowl of “caveats” placing various types of restrictions on the where troops from individual countries can be deployed and their rules of engagement. For an organisation whose purpose was to standardise equipment and procedures and ensure interoperability,this state of affairs is as ironic as it is shameful.

Perhaps they should just pack up and leave.

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