Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Yahoo.com
February 10, 2008 MUNICH, Germany (AFP) - US Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned that Islamic extremists worldwide would receive a huge morale boost if NATO's efforts to stamp out Afghanistan's resurgent Taliban falter.
Speaking at the annual Munich Conference on Security Policy, which for four decades has been a traditional venue for Washington to flag its concerns to European allies, Gates said that the loosely organised international Islamic movement is "built on the illusion of success".
"After all, about the only thing they have accomplished recently is the death of thousands of innocent Muslims while trying to create discord across the Middle East. So far they have failed. But they have twisted this reality into an aura of success in many parts of the world," Gates said.
"It raises the question: What would happen if the false success they proclaim became real success? If they triumphed in Iraq or Afghanistan, or managed to topple the government of Pakistan? Or a major Middle Eastern government?
"The task before us is to fracture and destroy this movement in its infancy -- to permanently reduce its ability to strike globally and catastrophically, while deflating its ideology. Our best opportunity as an alliance to do this is in Afghanistan."
Afghanistan's extreme-Islamic Taliban, who gave a safe haven to Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network, were ousted from power in 2001 by a US-led invasion in the wake of the September 11 attacks on the United States.
But international forces and the Afghan army have been confronted by a renewed Taliban insurgency which has been gaining strength, notably in the south of the country which has seen heavy fighting for months.
Gates has been pressing his message over recent days in Europe, notably at talks in Lithuania with fellow defence ministers from the 26-nation NATO, where he continued his campaign to convince European allies to send reinforcements to Afghanistan.
NATO's UN-mandated International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan has grown from 16,000 to 43,000 troops -- around one-third of them American and one-fifth British -- within the space of two years, but commanders have been calling for another 7,500.
With the public in many European countries strongly opposed or simply sceptical about their troops' involvement in what has been evolving from a peacekeeping mission to a combat operation, many governments have been wary of unpopular new deployments, especially of sending their forces to the volatile south.
"We must not -- we cannot -- become a two-tiered alliance of those willing to fight and those who are not," said Gates.
February 10, 2008 MUNICH, Germany (AFP) - US Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned that Islamic extremists worldwide would receive a huge morale boost if NATO's efforts to stamp out Afghanistan's resurgent Taliban falter.
Speaking at the annual Munich Conference on Security Policy, which for four decades has been a traditional venue for Washington to flag its concerns to European allies, Gates said that the loosely organised international Islamic movement is "built on the illusion of success".
"After all, about the only thing they have accomplished recently is the death of thousands of innocent Muslims while trying to create discord across the Middle East. So far they have failed. But they have twisted this reality into an aura of success in many parts of the world," Gates said.
"It raises the question: What would happen if the false success they proclaim became real success? If they triumphed in Iraq or Afghanistan, or managed to topple the government of Pakistan? Or a major Middle Eastern government?
"The task before us is to fracture and destroy this movement in its infancy -- to permanently reduce its ability to strike globally and catastrophically, while deflating its ideology. Our best opportunity as an alliance to do this is in Afghanistan."
Afghanistan's extreme-Islamic Taliban, who gave a safe haven to Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network, were ousted from power in 2001 by a US-led invasion in the wake of the September 11 attacks on the United States.
But international forces and the Afghan army have been confronted by a renewed Taliban insurgency which has been gaining strength, notably in the south of the country which has seen heavy fighting for months.
Gates has been pressing his message over recent days in Europe, notably at talks in Lithuania with fellow defence ministers from the 26-nation NATO, where he continued his campaign to convince European allies to send reinforcements to Afghanistan.
NATO's UN-mandated International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan has grown from 16,000 to 43,000 troops -- around one-third of them American and one-fifth British -- within the space of two years, but commanders have been calling for another 7,500.
With the public in many European countries strongly opposed or simply sceptical about their troops' involvement in what has been evolving from a peacekeeping mission to a combat operation, many governments have been wary of unpopular new deployments, especially of sending their forces to the volatile south.
"We must not -- we cannot -- become a two-tiered alliance of those willing to fight and those who are not," said Gates.