Standard Missile-3 launch
Julia Gillard, the new prime minister of Australia - which has the most and has lost the most troops in Afghanistan of any non-NATO nation, 1,550 and 21 respectively - addressed the House of Representatives ahead of flying to the NATO summit in Lisbon, and defended "Australia's likely involvement in the country for another decade."
"In the future when we look back on the years since 2001 no-one will deny that attention turned heavily to [the Iraq war]. While it has taken too long, there is now a strategy to achieve transition [in Afghanistan]."
Transition, not withdrawal.
Earlier in the same day she told Radio National:
"Our eyes shouldn't be on the calendar, they should be on the ground and working out whether the time to transition should be right.
"We shouldn't transition out only to have to transition back in some time
later." [9]
From Washington to Brussels to Canberra - the Pentagon, NATO and a rapidly evolving Asian NATO - the strategy like the terminology is identical: Interminable military deployments and combat operations in South and Central Asia as the model for new wars.
With NATO already involved in airlifting Ugandan troops to Somalia, running naval operations in the Horn of Africa, arming and training Georgia and Azerbaijan in the South Caucasus (on November 16 the NATO Parliamentary Assembly referred to Abkhazia and South Ossetia as "occupied territories"), and pledging to "defend" the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania over which it has flown warplanes on continuous rotations since 2004, there will be no lack of opportunities to employ and expand the Afghanistan-Pakistan template.
1) North Atlantic Treaty Organization
The Strategic Concept of the Alliance
http://www.nato.int/docu/handbook/2001/hb0203.htm
2) Lalit K. Jha, US has no Afghan exit strategy: Holbrooke
Pajhwok Afghan News, November 11, 2010
http://www.pajhwok.com/en/2010/11/11/us-has-no-afghan-exit-strategy-holbrooke
3) Tim Shipman, The West will never win war against Al Qaeda, warns armed forces chief as he reveals plans to keep troops in Afghanistan for '30 or 40 years'
Daily Mail, November 15, 2010
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1329560/General-Sir-David-Richards-The-West-win-war-Al-Qaeda.html
4) Nato must continue operations "beyond our borders"
Daily Telegraph, November 18, 2010 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/defence/8144154/Nato-must-continue-operations-beyond-our-borders.html
5) NATO Countries Flex Cyber Defences
Global Herald, November 15, 2010
6) Senator John F. Kerry, Critics write obits, but NATO focuses on new threats
Politico, November 17, 2010]
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1110/45288.html
7) West Plots To Supplant United Nations With Global NATO
Stop NATO, May 27, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/08/29/154
8) Ivo Daalder, The Case for a NATO Missile Defense
New York Times/International Herald Tribune, November 15, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/16/opinion/16iht-eddaalder.html
9) Gillard defends Afghan war role
Australian Broadcasting Company
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/11/18/3069693.htm?section=world
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