 former german president admitted the same reason for german troops being in afghanistan, and he was fired out!
"The transatlantic alliance is likely to become more relevant as new powers rise."...is the kind of thing a committee says about itself when it won't recognize that they are largely made up of dead wood, but is vain enough to require perfunctory plaidits all around. It's also obvious who the dead wood are. The question is: what does Germany or France do that is half as much as the Poles? Why, then, are the Germanies and Frances of the alliance deserving of a little star next to their name pinned up to the kindergarten cork board? Case in point, the spinning moral compass of the Turkish FM, obviously buying into the revised notion of what a martyr now is: no longer a victim of others sacrificed at the strength of ones' own fate, but one who murders others indiscriminately. In this case, how dare you offend me by defending yourself... Turkish feelings are more important than the civilian dead on 9-11 or what the Gazan would brutally do to you, me, or anyone else if they had the power to.
"The question is: what does Germany or France do that is half as much as the Poles?" Perhaps it did slip out of your mind that France and UK agreed on a common Defense agenda, that our troops aren't only serving in Afghanistan, that many other places on the planet requierred (and still do) their help, and we aren't the US altogether when our state has not much importance than a California and or a Texas. Now if you mean that we should be or become the US legion �trang�re, like the Poles, or the Georgians, you're dreaming, we'll never become a vassal to any other big power, just that we could share some objectives, and therefore then act together!
The French-English alliance is at this point entirely academic, and only time will tell if it is anything more than just another brave-sounding "announcement of the week". More to the point, it REINFORCES their own view that the alliance is made pointless by over-emphasis on scholar exchange programs, seminars, and any number of things. More to the point, the idea that anything that a European state does for itself and no-one else is some heroic and selfless act for the sake of their partners is beyond idiotic: it's delusional. Despite saying on numerous occasions over the years that they were going to, some day, embargo Iran to get them to curb their nuclear weapons program, they continue to undermine it with trade. Despite 5 year after 5 year phase of negotiating with Iran, all they did was provide cover for them to develop nukes. Their actions are beyond pointless and vain, they are destructive. Even as they make another announcment for another pretend initiative or yet another program, commission, or organization, the actions of the large European states (old europe,) has been an albatross in the way of freeing people from poverty and authoritarian tyranny. And yet they want to be admired as though they are some sort of oracle of humanism. It's pitiful. What you don't get, is that simply having a handful of troops in the field (after years of push-me, pull-you nonsense of the US being begged to ask, and being asked to beg), amounts to virtually nothing of any significance.
 The US' imported oil comes largely from Canada, Mexico, and South America. Mideast oil fuels Europe and the Asian rim. To say that it's just "playing" is as venal and detached from reality as it gets.
Do you even know the difference between a fact and an opinion? I'm familiar with the site, and met one of the people who started it. Just because it's based outside Paris, doesn't mean that the French government, or any other European government is engaging in a robust defense of their own security interests. Nor does it mean that training is the defense of anything when the governments taking part are feckless and undermine their own militaries.  since 1973 have based that on any sort of fact of any kind. The "Bring back the Shah" crowd has been comforting itself for decades with the delusion that the US didn't send in the Marines to prop up the Shah "for OOOOOOOOil!!!" It's the one thing that they have in common with the uneducated adolescents of the western left and Jihadist propaganda. I'll tell you what I DO know about why Europeans are so fond of blaming the US for going to war and staging putsches for oil: because Europeans have a longhistory of doing it themselves. Why do you think the Elysee ever even bothered with any part of French Wast Africa after "liberation" if they could help it? Fraternal love? No. Commodities. Commodities that they could have just bought - so it was both stupid AND evil.
jonouri, quiet! now, you only have clich�s on Europeans and a fortiori on French, the de-colonisation wasn't wished by all the african countries, but de Gaulle wanted them out of our "intendance", some african leaders today still say that they regret that, and that they were better before. as far as Oillllllllllllll for war, your the hospital that mocks at charity : your hawks in Washington concocted us some nice conspiracies, I wonder if wikileaks will reveil their origins and initiators once ;-) Wikileak, if your read me, please!
Those African leaders must be speaking soto voce as they have made their careers blaming their own corruption or lack of progress on colonialism. I would be interested in seeing a link to some leader in sub-Saharan Africa that has even suggested that their independence was not worth the state of how well the French ran their colonial empire.
A link to a French politician in Brittany yearning for the good old days and another link to an unsourced and unverified claim in a blog that ranks in with InforWars and Prison Planet for unreliability and mendacity is hardly proof. So in other words after desperately combing the internet there still are no African politicians pining for a return of the French Commonwealth much less the Empire.
"and another link to an unsourced and unverified claim" that's funny, your conservatives like this site! hmmm, not a "historical proof", but a indication! Seen a report about the subject though! now, I have no time to search more links, my wifi time is counted here!
Hardly... Just because you found some example of some west African who once had an opinion doesn't mean that THAT OPINION was to change the mind of the French government. Just think about how ridiculous your rationalization is - it's founded on your sispucion that someone, somewhere MIGHT have thought something agreeable to a point you're trying to make. As to "Evil AmeriKKKA and it's conspiracies", if they are so vile and so personally directed at you and your fragile self-image - were they to really exist over teh decades of people sputtering about them, don't you think there would be SOME sort of actual reflection of them in reality? Wouldn't, if this really is try, show that the US annexed parts of the world or is actually exploiting others' oil directly without compensation? Wouldn't that have been the first "dramatic leak?"   What the leaks display quite clearly, is that those most vociverous to reflexively make a bogeyman out of the United States are incredibly venal and largely impotent to deal with the risk to their populations and interests - that they are a bunch of posers. "jonouri quiet".... Is that how you operate? It seems all to real that the French mind ultimately concidered the souond of their own voices, suppressing anything that migh disagree with it as their famous "culture de d�bats". As to Joerg's notion that "Europe is useful to America", what exactly is it that you mean? Do you think that we WANT to spend generation after generation absorbing Europe's problems and risks? Taking it on as a burden?
�We haven't the feeling of a self-fragile image, in the contrary, we constructed ourselves in opposition to the anglo-saxon world� Harking back to the thread about a British/French jointly operated aircraft carrier( and NATO in general for that matter), the above pretty much says it all.
"Harking back to the thread about a British/French jointly operated aircraft carrier( and NATO in general for that matter), the above pretty much says it all." hmm, why do we need such a anglo-saxon aircraf carrier project? it is your vision of conflicts that imposed the design of it to the Brits, since then water passed under the bridges, and a money crisis, anyone? now, we have to rank the priorities, and this carrier ain't the first, but still our nuclear defense! Sorry, in EUrope we haven't a papermoney machine that can print at volonty, like yours, we are worried that our children will not have to pay for our foolishnesses!
I didn�t say you did need one. In fact, if you refer back to my original post, the point I was making was that even if such a thing existed it would be completely useless because you and the British would never be able to agree on how to use it. So I agree such a thing would be a waste of resources. Why don�t you try actually READING the posts before responding to them?
The odd thing about