Hi Rascal; Re: "I think Clark means troops from other countries."
Then he should have said so. And my criticism of him would have been accordingly different. I'd say that he was a dreamer, which is just as bad.
I'm sorry, but mending those fences with Europe don't mean ship. To properly occupy even a country as peaceful and serene as Northern Ireland with an occupying force as religiously and ethnically similar as Great Britain requires about 500,000 troops in Iraq.
Now think about this.
The United States, the world's sole superpower, is stretched to cough up 140,000 troops to send to Iraq. How the hell are we going to get Europe to send the missing 330,000? Europe ain't big enough to provide the troops.
It's a classic hopeless situation, and there is no conceivable collection of foreign countries that could come to the party and pull our chestnuts out of the fire. It just can't be done.
Furthermore, the very hopelessness of the numbers required means that few countries will be willing to send anything more than token contingents. Sure we might get France or Germany to send 20,000 troops each, (which I would be amazed at, and would require some sort of incredible persuasion), but that just doesn't make a dent in the actual numbers required. More likely is that they would send a few thousand, at most, and those would be from units that needed to get more combat experience for training purposes.
-- Carl |
