February 12, 2003
Clash of New and Old Europe continues in NATO
FOXNews.com
France, Germany and Belgium rejected a scaled-down U.S. proposal Wednesday for NATO preparations in case of war in Iraq, prolonging the alliance's worst internal crisis since the end of the Cold War.
NATO diplomats said the third day of emergency talks ended after about an hour and would resume Thursday.
For the past month, the holdouts have blocked the start of military planning to help defend Turkey -- the only NATO member bordering Iraq. France, Germany and Belgium say such a step could undercut U.N. efforts to resolve the Iraq crisis peacefully.
Washington and the 15 other NATO nations have reacted with increasingly harsh language, arguing the division weakens NATO's solemn bond of mutual defense and sends a dangerous message of disunity to Saddam Hussein.
Diplomats had said the three holdouts still wanted to link any decision at NATO to Friday's report to the U.N. Security Council on Iraq's cooperation with U.N. weapons inspectors.
[...]
Alliance officials said the excluded issues were being dealt with bilaterally. Germany, for example, deployed hundreds of soldiers at U.S. bases last month.
Illustrating deep anger over the issue in the United States, Democratic Rep. Tom Lantos of California said he was "particularly disgusted by the blind intransigence and utter ingratitude" of France, Germany and Belgium.
"The failure of these three states to honor their commitments is beneath contempt," he said in remarks prepared for a hearing by the House International Relations Committee, in Washington.
Sen. John Warner, a Virginia Republican and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Congress may consider reducing financial support for NATO.
Scary stuff, isn't it, to see our supposed allies behaving like this?
If the year were 1939 and this were the League of Nations, you could see France, Germany and Belgium refusing to put defenses in Poland (well, Germany's refusal would go without saying, wouldn't it?) against Hitler's aggression...
Tom Lantos is a rare bird: a Dimocrat with some sense and eloquence.
It seems that Old Europe won't be happy until they've completely destroyed NATO.
It doesn't occur to them that it might be their country someday that was being denied help when under a direct threat, hence the whole reason for NATO.
Their convoluted logic that they can't bolster Turkey until the UN makes a formal resolution to make war on Iraq is ludicrous; it doesn't make the threat of an attack or an actual attack itself any less probable.
You can be sure that Saddam wouldn't wait for any such resolution and in the past, hasn't--both when he waged the Iran-Iraq war and when he invaded Kuwait.
Pound cheese, you weasels!
NATO needed an overhaul anyway.
And if we don't disband it and reconfigure it without Old Europe, then let's at least change the procedural rules so that we don't have to have a unanimous vote to get something done!
