Check out the latest story Drudge is pushing:
Barack Obama made an impassioned plea to America’s allies to send more troops to Afghanistan, warning that failure to do so would leave Europe vulnerable to more terrorist atrocities.
But though he continued to dazzle Europeans on his debut international tour, the Continent’s leaders turned their backs on the US President.
My God – all of them denied Obama? Let’s read on:
Gordon Brown was the only one to offer substantial help. He offered to send several hundred extra British soldiers to provide security during the August election, but even that fell short of the thousands of combat troops that the US was hoping to prise from the Prime Minister.
Well ok we got one – right?
Just two other allies made firm offers of troops. Belgium offered to send 35 military trainers and Spain offered 12. Mr Obama’s host, Nicolas Sarkozy, refused his request.
Well wait, we got three.
Obama wanted to get 10,000 NATO troops committed, and this breaking news alert just came across (as I was working on this post – what timing!)
STRASBOURG, France (AP) White House says NATO allies commit up to 5,000 more military to Afghanistan.
So it appears that Obama got about half of what he wanted. That’s pretty good when you consider the financial crisis going on right now and the fatigue the world has of this war – thanks to George Bush.
I just wonder how many troops Bush would have had committed if he were doing this plea today? Well that might be a moot point, since Bush didn’t care about Afghanistan.
UPDATE:
They were just talking about this on MSNBC and Pat Buchanan said the forces in Afghanistan are called the ISAF, which he said means “I Saw Americans Fight”. This is the kind of insult that makes me wonder why other countries don’t just say “fuck you, we are out!”.
Sadly though, Buchanan isn’t the only one who uses these kind of insults towards our allies. It comes from countless on the right, and it will get us to the point that we have no allies left.
And just to add, a NATO troop was killed just today. Does Pat think this guy wasn’t there fighting? What an insulting asshole.