BUSH DISCREDITS AMERICA WITH THE WORLD
BRITAIN SAYS “NEVER AGAIN”

Okay. I know you’ve heard this before, but here’s yet another (my fourth?) post which supports intelligent claims that Bush is really making a mess of American security by lousing up our relationships with our past allies in the world. He’s even lost British support for any other venture someplace else in the world if he should ever ask them to help us again. As one senior British diplomat said, “Never again.”

If Americans reappoint Bush to office tomorrow, I doubt we’ll get any respect from the rest of the free world for a long time except for those weak nations, like Israel and other small fry, which desperately need our dole. We are no longer the leader of the free world. Do we understand that? We must have respect from other nations if we are to lead them. The bushman has lost us all such respect. Now, we’re more or less just a rogue nation alone and without good allies in the really free world.

Read the following from Newsweek, November 1, 2004, p. 34:

THE CREAKY COALITION

By Stryker McGuire of Newsweek

“Nov. 1 issue - America's 138,000 troops in Iraq were asking for a little help from their British friends. Could an 850-strong armored battalion of Scotland's Black Watch Regiment please be redeployed from Basra, in southern Iraq, to the outskirts of Baghdad? The request seemed straightforward enough. Yet it triggered another political crisis for Prime Minister Tony Blair last week. As British commanders weighed the American request, London editors wrote scare mongering headlines about the Black Watch's walking into a "Triangle of Death." Blair's critics charged that acceding to the U.S. request would amount to an election-eve boost to Bush's presidential campaign. Is it not time "to say 'no' to the Americans?" one Labour Party M.P. demanded of Blair.

“The prime minister didn't cave. But a new conventional wisdom is taking hold among Britain's military and foreign-policy elite: even if John Kerry defeats Bush, any British government will find it difficult, if not impossible, to muster popular support for a future American-led military intervention. A senior British diplomat put it bluntly to NEWSWEEK: ‘Never again.’

“Other members of Bush's Coalition of the Willing are getting balky, too. A total of 29 countries now have troops in Iraq, including Britain's 8,300. After pro-war Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar was voted out of office earlier this year, the new government withdrew all of Spain's 1,300 troops. Honduras and the Dominican Republic then brought home their small contingents. Under mounting domestic pressure, Italy (2,700 troops), Poland (2,500), Ukraine (1,600), the Czech Republic (100) and Slovakia (105) have hinted at troop reductions next year. The Coalition's Potemkin-village quality is perhaps best illustrated by Japan's contribution: 600 Self-”Defense Force troops. By law, they cannot instigate combat, and have not fired a single shot in anger. In fact, troops from the Netherlands' 500-strong contingent are deployed around the SDF compound in southern Iraq to provide an extra layer of security for the Japanese.

“Blair's fealty to Bush barely masks serious disagreements between the American and the British governments. In private, senior British military commanders have strongly criticized the United States' "overwhelming force" tactics in Iraq. Senior British Foreign Service officers have despaired at the post-9/11 collapse of American diplomacy. For Washington, it's one thing to see Thailand and New Zealand pulling troops out of Iraq. It's quite another to have Britain questioning its "special relationship" with the United States.”

Which countries are providing military support?

United States 138,000
Britain 8,530
Albania 70
Australia 850
Azerbaijan 150
Bulgaria 455
Czech Rep. 92
Denmark 510
Dominican Rep. 300
El Salvador 360
Estonia 55
Georgia 150
Hungary 300
Italy 2,700
Japan 1,000
Kazakhstan 25
Latvia 120
Lithuania 105
Macedonia 28
Moldavia 25
Mongolia 180
Netherlands 1,263
New Zealand 60
Nicaragua 115
Norway 150
Poland 2,400
Portugal 120
Romania 730
Singapore 200
Slovakia 105
South Korea 675 (3,000 on way)
Thailand 460
Tonga 44
Ukraine 1,700

Sources: Reuters news reports/GlobalSecurity.org.
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"War hath no fury like a non-combatant's." —C.E. Montague