Quote:
Originally Posted by Adux
Sorry for butting in gentlemen,
How much of french desire not to be second fiddle to USA or anyother plays here?
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quite a lot.
but then if you can think of a country that
wants to have its interests play second fiddle to someone elses then you've found the all time winner of the 'village idiot' award.
the problem Germany and France have with A'stan is that they feel the US and UK are concentrating on one side of the conflict while ignoring another - that of the political action and reconstruction that has died on its arse while everyone gets excited about the warfighting that's happening in the south. their analysis is that until the political and economic battles are being fought the military fight in the south is an irrelevence - hence them not being wildly keen to get involved.
they see the war of Afghanistan as having two seperate, but utterly intertwined 'enemy formations', the first being the glamourous bit of twatting Terry Taliban with JDAM's and Artillery, but the second (and vastly more important and long-lived) being to the indifference of the population as to whether the West wins or where what passes for its central government falls and the country again decends into just a place on the map where any group with some cash and a few 8x8 field tents can set up a training camp.
they see the second being almost completely ignored, and it being just as fatal to the war objectives as ignoring the left-hand armoured pincer would be in a conventional armoured battle on the inner German Border. they see point whatsoever in throwing soldiers into a war that they genuinely believe the US and UK are setting themselves up to lose. and its not difficult to see their point.