Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who is scheduled to leave his post next month, addressed NATO ministers at a meeting in Brusssels. His speech emphasized a view of militarism for the sake of militarism, a mobius strip of spending money on armaments, troops etc., then finding places in the world to use such forces..
The thinking process of Gates is mechanistic, angular and totally incapable of grasping the reality that the era of NATO engaging militarily around the world is a fading one, that the citizens of those NATO countries do not want their resources spent on armaments and weapons.
He appears oblivious to the human suffering that military actions by NATO bring to those who live there.
His words betray a view of humanity that best could be described as Orwellian.
Orwellian" describes the situation, idea, or societal condition that George Orwell identified as being destructive to the welfare of a free society. It connotes an attitude and a policy of control by propaganda, surveillance, misinformation, denial of truth, and manipulation of the past.........
Robert Gates ideas certainly qualify for "being destructive to the welfare of a free society".
Gates gets it backwards; European leaders will see the rise of the younger, moronic GOP or even Dem leaders and realize what a dead end following such policies will be.
Gates' Stupidity
Nato faced a "dim, if not dismal" future, consigned to "collective military irrelevance", Gates argued, warning for the first time that Nato was living on borrowed time and that a new young generation of US leaders could abandon the key pillar of transatlantic security established in 1949.
"If current trends in the decline of European defence capabilities are not halted and reversed, future US political leaders – those for whom the cold war was not the formative experience that it was for me – may not consider the return on America's investment in Nato worth the cost."
Here Gates unknowingly makes the case for decreasing the use of military force around the world; because it is not effective in creating political change.
He attacked Europe's conduct of the bombing campaign against Gaddafi in Libya, told the Europeans to forget any notions of pulling their troops out of Afghanistan in a piecemeal manner, and said that the big new factor raising questions about Nato's survival was the "political and economic environment in the United States".
"The mightiest military alliance in history is only 11 weeks into an operation against a poorly armed regime in a sparsely populated country," Gates said of the Anglo-French led campaign in Libya. "Yet many allies are beginning to run short of munitions, requiring the US, once more, to make up the difference."
What is unacceptable is the continued belief that you can bomb people and countries into agreeing with your point of view.
"The drift of the past 20 years can't continue," Gates said. "In the past, I've worried openly about Nato turning into a two-tiered alliance: between members who specialise in 'soft' humanitarian, development, peacekeeping, and talking tasks, and those conducting the "hard" combat missions … This is no longer a hypothetical worry. We are there today. And it is unacceptable.
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