Ah, but b- isn’t looking at this from vantage point of xUS Elites. They’ve bankrupted the country & are preparing to toss in the towel, jettisoning the Consitution formally (via merging w/Mexico & Canada) & declaring a police state. What’s to keep professional classes from fleeing to Europe?? Important question, as there is zero reason to stay here & now that they’re destroying Canada, that’s no longer the refuge of choice.
Might as well talk Euros into sending troops to the latest graveyard of the Empire, which can be used as an excuse to stage a false flag attack in said countries. Enough of them & they can be strong armed into declaring police states across Europe to keep Am. professionals at home. Recall that radical right wing Israeli elites cooked up attacks supposedly by malemuslims in favorite Euro capitals to convince their young professionals that Europe is too anti-semitic to immigrate to. (I’ve spoken to a fair number who were thusly manipulated.)
I may well be wrong, but it is a problem that xUS elites do have to plan for. Or will they reduce the scope of their problem by outlawing international travel for am. citizens w/outstanding student loans?

Posted by: jj | Nov 23 2007 4:22 utc | 4

Doubts about the alliance in the UK?
We fret over Europe, but the real threat to sovereignty has long been the US

Yet, according to the available statistics, over 10,500 US military personnel were stationed in the UK as late as 2005, a higher total than in any other European state, barring Germany and Italy, both defeated in the second world war. In all, well over 1.3 million US personnel have been stationed here since 1950, without – so far as I know – any consultation of the electorate.
…
My point is not American power, but rather the double standard that characterises so much British political discourse. Sections of the media and members of both major parties have been all too eager to bang the autonomy drum when it comes to Europe. But there is a marked unwillingness to analyse the challenges to British independence from US influence; and those touching on the subject are swiftly denounced.
The usual rationalisation for this double standard is that the EU threatens Britain’s internal way of life, while its relationship with the US does not. This is palpably absurd. Even leaving aside its military bases, America’s influence on the domestic ordering of British life has been enormous, though sometimes unrecognised.
…

Posted by: b | Nov 23 2007 10:00 utc | 6

Might as well talk Euros into sending troops to the latest graveyard of the Empire, which can be used as an excuse to stage a false flag attack in said countries. Enough of them & they can be strong armed into declaring police states across Europe to keep Am. professionals at home. Recall that radical right wing Israeli elites cooked up attacks supposedly by malemuslims in favorite Euro capitals to convince their young professionals that Europe is too anti-semitic to immigrate to. (I’ve spoken to a fair number who were thusly manipulated.)

That makes for an interesting context our european march towards surveillance societies. And why not? The main terrorist groups in europa are ETA and Fronte di Liberazione Naziunale di a Corsica (FLNC), both local and separatist. And they are old and slowly withering away. Despite attempts, the big scary muslem bogeyman is not scaring that many (yet). In Sweden the Liberal party (Europe, so liberal=right wing) has repeatedly claimed that all surveillance is necessary because if the swedish troops in Afghanistan captures Bin Laden (yeah right) Sweden will be the target of millions of angry muslem terrorists!
So for an advanced societies with long education times to function with a police state other countries has to be perceived to be as bad, otherwise people move, taking their education with them. And forcing people to stay undercuts the propaganda of how good it is (making more people flee), plus it is hard to implement (see East Berlin for reference). Therefore all advanced societies must go towards police states if the US does it. Enforcement is a question of propaganda (think tanks), lobbying, media support for the right politicians, overt or covert bribes, threaths and violence.

Posted by: a swedish kind of death | Nov 23 2007 12:09 utc | 8

@Debs
Nato was set up to reinforce amerikan hold over the assets ‘won’ in WW2
I agree – just as the “east” was occupied (more brutal) to reinforce russian hold over the assets ‘won’ in WW2.
There was a “balance”. And the real advantage of a market economy over a planned economy made it even preferable to most people in western Europe.
and now that the locals have been mostly indoctrinated and the Russian excuse is temporarily in abeyance, Nato is being used to expand the empire.
Yes – and there is considerable restance to this which is not just simply drifting away.
Some countries in europe see through this and resist,
I think you will find this resistance in all European countries.
But it is a bit more complicated. There was a “competition of ideologial systems” between the Sowjet side and the U.S. side. In Europe that generally led to a “balanced” version less “free market” than paleo U.S. rapture capitalism and to tze compromise of “social-democracy”.
With the sowjet system gone, free weeling rapture capitalism was reintroduced through the “globalisation” chimera. The “new economy”, which imploded in 2000/2001 and the “financial services markets” which are imploding now. There is a backslash building against this – still not strong enough but a lot of people are simply pissed.
but the price in terms of political interference is high, so many governments especially pseudo centre left governments, go along despite their reservations and the population’s opposition.
Correct – but the disguise does only work so long. See how fast Sarkozy is going down even while having big media completely on his side. Brown in the UK runs into trouble too over trying to be a better Blair. Merkel just lost the “most desirable” politician status in polls this week. Poland did quite a turn too.
It will not end being “against” the U.S. but there is an assertion of independence coming. (BTW: The Euro has a huge psychological effect here – now its “us” versus “them”.)
There is little else to be found in any examination of Nato Bernard. It is an arm of a corrupt empire is all.
If it really would be as complete as you imaginate, there would be by now 200,000 European NATO troops in Afghanistan and the same amount in Iraq. There ain’t – for good reasons.

Posted by: b | Nov 23 2007 20:22 utc | 10

Meant Debs…………… de Gaulle was right in leaving NATO, no US troops on French soil.

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Nov 23 2007 23:37 utc | 12

. (BTW: The Euro has a huge psychological effect here – now its “us” versus “them”.)

good. there is nothing more effective than showing your angst than f ing w/the dollar. we have to think globally. if homegrown americans can’t stop the beast, somebody has to do it.

Posted by: annie | Nov 24 2007 7:16 utc | 14

Just to put it in perspective, Afghanistan has both a dynamic business and technical environment. If it weren’t for all the mercs and talibs running drugs and weapons, they might even have a country. There’s hotels, restaurants, coffee shops, internet cafe’s, sat TV, and they just finished holding a national soccer tournament. There’s open bazaars and bottling plants, road projects, grand mosques uncompleted, housing tracts, glass factories, high-rise office buildings, and the Hindu Kush looming over a frontier town so full of energy it’s electric. There are vendors from every nation, working to rebuild the country as a democracy, and a largely elected, largely secular non-centrist government.
Or, let’s take Lebanon. Please….
Instead we get this:
http://montrealsimon.blogspot.com/2007/10/canada-and-dancing-boys-of-afghanistan.html
and this:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/11/24/2099999.htm?section=justin
from reporters who have never been there, and troops stationed in compounds outside of towns, who speak no Farsi or Pashtu, and only see Afghanistan from a gun turret,
whose entire experience of AF is from night vision gatling gun shootups.
We now return you to our regular channel of promised US and NATO aid, mysteriously embezzled away. If you can believe it, the Yanks are spending $10M to air condition AF militia headquarters, so they can build enough joie de vivre among the recruits to Monsanto-ize AF’s poppied grassy steppes, and turn them into salt flats.
Which, of course, is a crime against humanity, but what else is new in the Empire?

Posted by: Peris Troika | Nov 24 2007 8:22 utc | 16

Mindest of the U.S. military:

Over the past year, all combat encounters against the Taliban have ended with “a very decisive defeat” for the extremists, Brig. Gen. Robert E. Livingston Jr., commander of the U.S. task force training the Afghan army, told reporters this month. The growing number of suicide bombings against civilians underscores the Taliban’s growing desperation, according to Livingston and other U.S. commanders.

in U.S. Notes Limited Progress in Afghan War

But others said the problem is not Pakistan or a lack of military or financial resources in Afghanistan. It is the absence, they say, of a strategic plan that melds the U.S. military effort with a comprehensive blueprint for development and governance throughout the country.
“There are plenty of dollars and a hell of a lot more troops there, by a factor of two, from when I was there,” the former commander said. The question, he said, is “who owns the overarching campaign for Afghanistan, and what is it?”

Posted by: b | Nov 25 2007 8:22 utc | 18