Finally there’s something I agree with the neocons about: NATO. That organization is a dinosaur of the Cold War whose extinction is long overdue. Now, the neocons—whose Iraq project ran afoul of old Europe—seem ready to get rid of NATO, too.
Today’s Wall Street Journal, in an editorial called “What Alliance?” strips the happy talk away from President Bush’s meetings in Turkey, correctly noting that NATO ain’t having anything do with Bush’s Iraq fiasco, and that the idea of NATO training Iraqi forces is literally the least that NATO could do. (The administration, with the support of toadying White House reporters, is portraying it as a major breakthrough.) The Journal slams NATO for contributing a measly 6,500 troops for Afghanistan, then adds:
European leaders will congratulate each other for agreeing to train Iraqi security services, a job France and Germany somehow intend to accomplish without sending any troops to Iraq. If that’s all the help the U.S. can get from our partners, it may be time to rethink the underlying premise of this ‘alliance.’ [For] 60 years, American taxpayers footed most of the bill to protect Europe, most recently deploying forces to stop the Balkan wars. Somehow Europeans appear to believe Americans will continue doing this indefinitely, regardless of European behavior and attitudes. They are badly mistaken.
Of course, Bush administration “realists” and Kerry-style national security experts will huff and puff about the vital need for NATO, an alliance built to fight a Cold War that ended long ago. NATO has already expanded to include most of the Warsaw Pact, and next we’ll be inviting Israel, Iraq, and other Middle East nations to join the fun. (Eventually, every nation in the world except North Korea might be a member.)
In any case, the administration is intent on portraying Bush’s trip to NATO—and to Turkey—this week as a triumph, but it’s not. It’s a total flop. The New York Times cites an expert from the Nixon Center saying it thusly: “I don’t think you can turn around three years of U.S. foreign policy with some midnight initiatives. The image of this president in the public’s and the world’s eyes is pretty much established.”
In Turkey, our Evangelist-Leader met with Jewish, Christians and Muslims in Turkey, and thanked them “for being so faithful to the Almighty God.” But God wasn’t mighty enough either to quash the anti-Bush protests—tens of thousands in Turkey alone—or to get His followers onto the streets to cheer the Evangelist in Chief. Here’s the how the usually pro-Bush Telegraph of London reports on Bush’s motorcade through Europe , mixed with typical Bush bumble-speak:
Otherwise the impression from the motorcade was the same: anti-Bush graffiti, lines of armed policemen, roadblocks, and emptied roads.
"Tomorrow I will travel to Turkey for the Nato summit," he said before correcting himself: "Actually, today I will travel to Turkey. Tomorrow is the Nato summit." One administration official went on to insist that a demonstration only counted when there were 100,000 people on the streets.
But even in the insulated world of the presidential "bubble," it was hard to sustain that view as the motorcade cruised to the airport through roads that had been sealed to keep protesters at bay.
