The fruits of Zawahiri's labor?

The last we heard from Ayman he was announcing the GSPC's inclusion into al Qaeda and their mutual declaration of mayhem against France. That message hit the headlines on September 11th.

A few days prior, on September 9th, NATO military leaders made a plea for up to 2500 additional troops in Afghanistan to help fight the Taliban. Currently British, Canadian and Dutch troops are taking the brunt of the casualties there.

So, who's answered the bell? As of September 13th the Supreme Commander had receieved a whopping 20 troops, from powerful Latvia. Poland then came through with 1000 to help bolster the force, once again proving they understand tyranny in the world. Other countries seem to prefer sending sending armor to protect the men and women already there.

Apparently some countries are conflicted on the rules of engagement, which include the actual killing of enemy troops using loaded weapons. For a glimpse of the mindset, here's how a Canadian MP described the 'problem':

New Democrats are in the vanguard of the growing numbers who are highly critical of the search-and-kill combat mission in southern Afghanistan. CARE Canada’s president has asserted that "this war is unwinnable if we keep concentrating on the military/technological side without undercutting the world view that motivates our enemies

No. Clue.

So what of France? Of their 135,000 person army they've invested 1900 troops to the mission. Only 9 have paid the ultimate price so far, bad, but much less than most other comparable sized contingents. They don't plan to send more, but quickly point out they've finally committed 2000 troops to the new UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon, yet they have 7600 troops deployed in "the Carribean". But don't bother bringing up Normandy lest you be called insensitive.

If Poland can ante up 1000 troops it certainly seems France could send at least another 100. It looks to me like warnings from Zawahiri are designed to stop the French from responding more vigorously by threatening to rile up their local Muslim mobs, affecting operations in both Lebanon and Afghanistan. But that's clearly the problem with other NATO signatory countries, who are more concerned about local politics than honoring the treaty. If that's the case, might as well chuck it.

By the way, at least one lefty site reacted to the call for more troops as yet another way to bash Bush, despite an international force on the ground. These idiots have conveniently forgotten their own howls of "quagmire" before we ousted the Taliban government and allowed free elections for the first time in their history.

And with that there's an irony. Iraq war supporters are often branded as "chickenhawks" for advocating the war but not signing up to fight it, to some degree a legitimate point especially for those of military age. However, the same folks have also offered support for 'the real war' further east, and have argued that Bush should have added more forces--all from the safety of their computer chair.

DID BUSH CONTRADICT HIMSELF? 9/20/06

That's what the AP is charging in regards to his comments to Wolf Blitzer about going into Pakistan in pursuit of bin Laden. He told Wolf "absolutely" when asked whether he would order cross border raids to get UBL or Zawahiri if intelligence showed them there. AP points out that just last week Bush said this:

Q Thank you, Mr. President. Earlier this week, you told a group of journalists that you thought the idea of sending special forces to Pakistan to hunt down bin Laden was a strategy that would not work.

THE PRESIDENT: Yes.

Q Now, recently you've also --

THE PRESIDENT: Because, first of all, Pakistan is a sovereign nation.

Reading the rest of the quote he seems to stumble around some, but does say we can't just go in there willy-nilly. I couldn't find a transcript from the program to confirm what else might have been said.

Since this question is liable to come up at the White House press briefing Thursday perhaps Snow will have a reasonable answer. Pakistan has been playing games on their role of late, first making a peace deal with the Taliban and suggesting they would offer bin Laden exile if he renounced terrorism, then saying, 'absolutely not'.

One might say Bush intentionally made this comment in front of an international audience on CNN to send a message to Pakistan about this behavior, making sure the AQ guys (who watch CNN) also got the message. But it seems an easy way to leave himself open for charges of hypocrisy or incompetence. We'll see.

MORE 9/21/06

The cat and mouse contest with Pakistan just keeps getting weirder. After Bush announced that, heck yeah, he would send forces into Paki if he thought the weird beards were there, Musharraf chimes in with a bombshell of his own:

“The intelligence director told me that (Armitage) said, ‘Be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age,”’ Musharraf said.

No one should be surprised by that--both WTC bombers hailed from the Quetta area and both were arrested there as well. Bush did say "with us or with the terrorists", but in their case, it was more like "cooperate or die".

But after five years of bin Laden trapsing around the wild yonders of that country, Bush must be getting frustrated. Pakistan's failure to corral the territories and their recent kiss and make up with the Taliban might have been a straw, perhaps the last.

By the way, it's shocking such a diplomatic message could possibly eminate from the "we hate cowboys, too" State Department, but it was on the heels of 9/11. On more thing, if true it seems to be consistent with how Armitage's friends describe his communications skills regards the Plame affair.