Germany, U.S. reject more troops for Afghanistan but press NATO to help Canada

Germany has more military capacity than Canada, Canada just has far more political guts.

Cute. They could have 320,000 troops in Afghanistan, but if they refuse to leave their safe havens WTF good are they to the rest of the coalition???????????????????

BTW what do they need a quick reaction force in the North for, when nothing happens up there anyway?

This is just more smoke and mirrors by the German Government to try and convince themselves that their basically non combat role is relevant in winning the war.

Safe and Afghanistan in the same sentence, that's a good one. Can wait to see how 'safe' it would be if they left outright.

We'll know soon enough when we pull out, because they don't honour their commitment to NATO and stay ensconsed in the north because of a lack of political will to put their troops in harms way.

Here's a list of their casualties in Afghanistan:

March 6, 2002: Two German sergeants and three Danes are killed while attempting to dismantle a Russian SA-3 missile in a camp workshop.

- December 21, 2002: Seven German personnel are killed when a material flaw causes their helicopter to crash near Kabul, the worst loss suffered anywhere by German forces abroad since 1945.

- May 29, 2003: A patrol car is blown up by a mine near the German ISAF camp in Kabul: one soldier killed.

- June 7, 2003: A suicide bomber kills four German personnel in Kabul: 29 persons are injured.

- June 25, 2005: An accidental blast while loading ammunition on a truck at Rustak kills two German soldiers.

- August 10, 2005: One soldier is killed when a Wolf patrol car overturns south-east of Kabul.

- November 14, 2005: A Taliban suicide bomber kills a soldier and wounds two others in Kabul.

- May 19, 2007: Three German solders are among nine people killed by suicide attacks in Kunduz.


And while I agree that there is probably no real safe place in afghanistan, the Germans have actually lost more people to accidents than to enemy action, which would indicate a much safer area of operation than what we are experiencing in the south.

As opposed to Japan that sent their merchant Navy to a landlocked nation? Getting mad at NATO for being a paper tiger is like getting mad at the weather. It isn't going to change anything as NATO simply does not have the heavy lift required only Superpowers like US, Russia and China can do what we are asking for here. Not to mention the fact that India, right next door, has not even asked to pitch in. I understand your angst vs the bigger NATO powers such as France and Germany but frankly I am amazed they are even there. Denmark (as usual) seems to be pulling their weight for them and countries like Poland simply have not have time to develop much in the way of a military for themselves let alone anyone else.

Denmark... I hate the Danish, but I admire them too. Go figure.

what Canada has is an idiot ass kisser running the country..... for now

Steven Harper hasn't been kissing anyone's ass but his own.

Which has absolutely no relevance to the topic at hand but is just another feeble attempt to blame something on Stephen Harper that he honestly has no control over.

It is time for other members of NATO to step forward and offer more than platitudes.Some of the European countries would have no logistic problems contributing another 1000 troops, but would more than likely pay for that contribution come the next election.

Yes those nasty Danish. Evil to a man. What are you going on about?

Scape, you forget that the UK has (and Canada will soon) a viable strategic airlift capability. We have one C17 and the Brits have 5 with 3 more on order. Once we have the 4 plus the C130J's we will have upgraded Air Commands tac and strat airlift options notably.

The real issue for the CF is lack of rotary wing support.
Hopefully we can get the new CH47's a bit quicker and we can stop our guys being killed by roadside IED's by flying over them.

The Brits have Apaches in theatre that can escort transport helo's which should pacify tally's with RPG's.

We have to review our military tactics long term.
The genie is out of the bottle with IED's. Therefore ground troops being routinely transported by road are sitting ducks in third world theatres.
Time we re-structured the combat arms to avoid this threat. Air mobile......Air Cavalry....duh duh der der....

Please note Eyebrock that my comment was in jest. I should have added a :p or to add to that, but w/e.

Ok mate! No worries!

What about the Iroquois and Kiwawas we have in mothball? or Buying surplus mils or mabey STOL aircrafts such as otter. Any one of these options should allow us to get over the IED problem until we get CH47s



Why is this such a suprise, didn't the Vietcong make mines out of bombs that didn't go off and anti personel weapons out of shrpend sticks or grenades and soup cans?