POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL
"...its members’ penny-pinching and lack of political will..."
Oh we sure know the United States isn't "penny-pinching" when it comes to war.
It is fighting more wars than you can count, all on borrowed money, surely providing the example of the most mindless spend-thrift of all time.
What a ridiculous statement Gates makes, considering the mess - sorry, that is, messes – into which the United States has put itself.
As for "political will," of course, what Gates really means is the will to do what the United States wants done.
No one else thinks it makes any sense to stay in Afghanistan.
No one else - except the great idiot Tony Blair - thought it made any sense to invade Iraq.
Already, the mandate for a no-fly zone in Libya has been distorted beyond recognition into a get-Gaddafi campaign.
America's drones in Pakistan are criminal hi-tech mass murder.
And there are reportedly secret air operations in Yemen.
Not only does all of this murderous activity reflect no ethics or human values, it all costs unbelievable amounts of money - money the United States simply does not have.
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NATO's prime function, from America's point of view, is that it serves as a way to maintain its hegemony in Europe under the pretense of cooperation and alliance.
NATO also is used by America as a convenient fig leaf for some of its ghastly behavior, as in "NATO planes bombed targets..." when we know they were American planes exclusively or overwhelmingly.
Eisenhower wisely warned us of the military-industrial complex more than half a century ago.
But things over that time have gone from bad to worse, worse than anything he could have imagined.
America has become a world-scale bully, a rather nightmarish quasi-police state, armed to the teeth, and, with no money, it is always sour when others neglect picking up the bill for its self-declared necessary tasks.
