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Germany sends Six Tornados and 500 more Troops to A.

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  • Germany sends Six Tornados and 500 more Troops to A.

    The German Palarment just voted to send Six Tornados RECCE and 500 more Soldiers to Afghanistan. The Tornados are supposed to provide the Nato forces with air reconnaissance while the Troops should be used along with the rest of the German forces mainly in the North.

    Further the former german defense secretary and now faction leader of the SPD Struck announced that Germany will likely stay for over ten years in Afghanistan.

    (german) sources:

    Afghanistan: Bundestag schickt Tornados über die Front - Politik - SPIEGEL ONLINE - Nachrichten
    http://de.today.reuters.com/news/new...ANISTAN-ZF.xml

  • #2
    That is nice but I rather see the Germans relax their ROEs than sending token forces.

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    • #3
      Originally posted by Officer of Engineers View Post
      That is nice but I rather see the Germans relax their ROEs than sending token forces.
      hear hear Sir
      sigpicFEAR NAUGHT

      Should raw analytical data ever be passed to policy makers?

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      • #4
        Originally posted by Officer of Engineers View Post
        That is nice but I rather see the Germans relax their ROEs than sending token forces.
        not gonna happen. Germany is freakin afraid of sending their troops into combat...less because it would be dangerours for the troops, but because the people here are really scared by the possibbilty of causing collateral damage.

        btw: Does anybody know if Canada already got the Tanks from Germany? Could not find any updates about that.

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        • #5
          Originally posted by Tarek Morgen View Post
          btw: Does anybody know if Canada already got the Tanks from Germany? Could not find any updates about that.
          Not yet. Canadian Officers are right now in Germany finalizing the deal and arranging training for the crews but no deal has been signed as of yet.

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          • #6
            Originally posted by Officer of Engineers View Post
            Not yet. Canadian Officers are right now in Germany finalizing the deal and arranging training for the crews but no deal has been signed as of yet.
            thanks for the fast answer.

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            • #7
              The German supreme court just dismissed a sue by two membrs of the parlament against the sending of the tornados for legal reasons. According to the court on this issue single members of the parlament have not the right to sue against such descissions, but only the factions as a whole of a party could do so.

              So it is good possible that the socalist party might try another sue a as a faction of the parlament to stop the deployment, although I doub that they will succeed.

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              • #8
                Jesus CHRIST!!!

                This is going to sound churlish, and at the expense of belittling a welcome contribution by an ally...

                THIS is what we get from a supposedly-responsible G-8 country? Talk about punching below their weight, THIS is a JOKE, and even at this level of participation, the knots everybody has to tie themselves into to do what amounts to a token, spit-in-the-ocean contribution to a VERY worthy endeavor is quite frankly embarrassing.

                Makes me appreciate John Howard's Australia more every day.

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                • #9
                  Originally posted by Bluesman View Post
                  Jesus CHRIST!!!

                  This is going to sound churlish, and at the expense of belittling a welcome contribution by an ally...

                  THIS is what we get from a supposedly-responsible G-8 country? Talk about punching below their weight, THIS is a JOKE, and even at this level of participation, the knots everybody has to tie themselves into to do what amounts to a token, spit-in-the-ocean contribution to a VERY worthy endeavor is quite frankly embarrassing.

                  Makes me appreciate John Howard's Australia more every day.
                  uhm Germany has about 3000 men in Afghanistan (not counting the ones mentioned above). This is puts them behind of the US and the Uk, and slighty ahead of Canada. One might still argue that this is quite fwe for a nation like germany which is after all the third biggest economy of the world and has an army of about 250.000 men (20% of these are conscript, and we dont send those on dangerours missions like Afghanistan) , but what differs Germany from nations like the UK or France is that the German Army was never suppossed and designed to intervine in other countries around the world. Its only purpose was to defend Germany in case of an attack (our own constitution prohibts germany in taking part in any invasion or supporting one, except if supported by a mandat by the UN, nato or eu). We simply dont have the means to move 10.000 men to another country and take part in combat. There have been attemps to reform the army to compensate those lacks but this takes time and money, and since the reunion the bundeswehr never had any priority in the budget. Rebuilding 25% of your nation which suffered from 40 years of socialism is quite expensive. Currently we have about 10.000 men on different missions around the world, and this pretty much all we can do with the current army we have. To do more in Afghanistan we would have to retreat from missions like in the kosovo or at the coast of the Lebanon.

                  Further sending troops into combat is still a big taboo in Germany (like mentioned above). Ten years ago even these "token efforts" would have been suicide for any German government and even this mission is heavily under fire. Not because the people here think we should not help Afghanistan but because that German has no moral right because of its history to take part in any sort of combat except for pure self-defense (heck there are even voices who demand the complete disarmed of germany), and would rather concentrate on civilian efforts in Afghanistan (about who should protect these civilians they dont seem to think about). An event like at Abu Ghraib would lead to the end of the German mission and any German government would have to resign at once.

                  Another reason for Germany not being very keen on combat mission might sound kinda stupid, but Germany tries not to piss of the Afghanis. Germany is one of the few western nations left that is not hated by everybody in this area (for several reason I guess, we never invaded them in the past, germany was one of the first european nations to recognized it as a souvereign country and invited King Mohammed Sahir, they like our cars (this one seems always to work) and some other reasons). This went so far that Germany doesnt use much of heavy equipment like our leopard 2 because the Bundeswehr does not want to appear as occupiers but as guest. And to a point this seemed to work until now, of course there are still the oines who pretty much hate and want to kill everybody, but the general population seems to welcome the German troops more than the ones of the U.S. or U.K. (this is mostly based on what I heart of people who served in the ISAF on a german forum similar to WAB). On Officer went even so far to talk of a "black-red-gold-shield" (refering to the german flag) which would at least help to point in protecting our troops. (Althoug on of the men who served I mentioned aboved saiud that a mercedes-star would probably work better, because more people would know this one)

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