Category: Blogs

Is NATO going out of business?

By Patrick Buchanan, the Miami Herald

From Patrick Buchanan, the Miami Herald:  [Secretary of Defense Robert] Gates’ patience with the Europeans is, understandably, just about exhausted.

Atlantic Update 6/20/2011

By HuiHui Ooi

The Czech Republic announced a surprise exit from the U.S.-backed European missile shield proposal last week. Greece fights to handle its internal chaos as its people are protesting against stricter austerity measures whereas the Eurozone financial ministers are pressuring Greece to approve these measures before they decide on the second Greek loan. In order to […]

Update: NATO activities in Libya on June 18

By NATO

NATO acknowledges civilian casualties in Tripoli strike

By NATO

From NATO:  NATO says that a military missile site was the intended target of air strikes in Tripoli last night. However, it appears that one weapon did not strike the intended target and that there may have been a weapons system failure which may have caused a number of civilian casualties.  “NATO regrets the loss […]

Gates’s parting shot exposes Europe’s military failings

By Charlemagne, the Economist

From Charlemagne, the Economist:  Three months into the war in Libya, and confident talk of Muammar Qaddafi’s forces being broken by NATO’s bombs is being accompanied by worries that the alliance itself is feeling the strain of a prolonged campaign. The British naval chief says that, if the war drags on beyond the autumn, he […]

Looking Back, Gates Says He’s Grown Wary of ‘Wars of Choice’

By Thom Shanker and Elisabeth Bumiller, the New York TImes

From Thom Shanker and Elisabeth Bumiller, the New York TImes:  Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, as he prepared to depart the government for the second time, said in an interview on Friday that the human costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had made him far more wary

Update: NATO activities in Libya on June 17

By NATO

The action in Libya looks like war to us

By the Editors of the Washington Post

From the Editors of the Washington Post:  The Obama administration’s depiction of its Libya venture as too halfhearted to be covered by the War Powers Resolution contains an unfortunately large dollop of truth.

Libya and the Potemkin alliance

By George F. Will, the Washington Post

From George F. Will, the Washington Post:  America’s intervention in Libya’s civil war, the most protracted and least surreptitious assassination attempt in history, was supposed to last “days, not weeks,” but is in its fourth month