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Saturday, June 16, 2012

AFGHANISTAN: NATO'S GRAVEYARD?, War on Terror, NewAgeIslam.com

War on Terror
AFGHANISTAN: NATO'S GRAVEYARD?
Tomgram: John Feffer, Will NATO's 60th Anniversary Be Its Last?
posted September 29, 2009
By John Feffer

Celebrating its 60th birthday this year, NATO is looking peaked and significantly worse for wear. Aggressiveand ineffectual, the organization shows signs of premature senility. Despite the smiles and reassuring rhetoric at its annual summits, its internal politics have become fractious to the point of dysfunction. Perhaps like any sexagenarian in this age of health-care crises and economic malaise, the transatlantic alliance is simply anxious about its future.

Frankly, it should be.

The painful truth is that NATO may be suffering from a terminal illness. Its current mission in Afghanistan, the alliance's most significant and far-flung muscle-flexing to date, might be its last. Afghanistan has been the graveyard of many an imperial power from the ancient Macedonians to the Soviets. It now seems to be eyeing its next victim.

For NATO, this year should have been a celebration, not a dirge. After suffering a transatlantic rift of epic proportions during the Bush years, the alliance thrilled to the election of Barack Obama and his politics of conciliation. The new American administration swore it would shift troops from Iraq to Afghanistan to give NATO more of what it wanted to fight "the right war." Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton both promised to push the "reset button" on U.S.-Russian relations, potentially removing one of the greatest obstacles to NATO's health and well-being. And in a final flourish for the alliance's diamond jubilee, France agreed to return to the fold, reintegrating into NATO after 43 years of standoffishness.

http://newageislam.com/afghanistan--nato-s-graveyard?-/war-on-terror/d/1837

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