This is the one thing you are not supposed to do...give in to a terrorists demands.

Although they planned on withdrawing their troops they are still giving in.

Then again, if I was the hostage I'd probably want them to do the same thing so I could avoid getting my head sawed off while still alive.

We did basically the same thing during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.

If you spin it the right way, it doesn't really have that big of an impact.

Now, Japan and Korea had no plans to withdraw, so if they made the same move, it would be dumb. And no government will ever do anything other than what they did in the same situation.

They were palnning on pulling out in mid-August. They just saved the man's life. Kind of like our early turnover of power probably saved a lot of people's lives. I'm afraid this is just the beginning of the tumble for our coalition of the "willing". I wonder how many troops these countries sent?

Azerbaijan
Uzbekistan
Georgia
Marshall Islands
Micronesia
Solomon Islands
Mongolia
Palau
Tonga
Eritrea
Ethiopia
Uganda
Rwanda
Angola

Dogger Wrote:They were palnning on pulling out in mid-August. They just saved the man's life. Kind of like our early turnover of power probably saved a lot of people's lives. I'm afraid this is just the beginning of the tumble for our coalition of the "willing". I wonder how many troops these countries sent?

Azerbaijan
Uzbekistan
Georgia
Marshall Islands
Micronesia
Solomon Islands
Mongolia
Palau
Tonga
Eritrea
Ethiopia
Uganda
Rwanda
Angola

I wouldn't demean the contribution of those countries. There are other nations in the coalition providing troops (Italy, Denmark, Poland, Ukraine, Japan, South Korea among many more; and at least during the occupation Thailand, the Philippines, Spain, and Portugal), but you fail to mention them.

There are many important reasons to have the political support of these countries even if not the military support, not the least of which is that the political cooperation resulting leads to the building stronger strategic alliances in critical places throughout the world, including in strategically important nations like Angola, Uganda, Rwanda (all for strategic positioning in the critical region of central and southern Africa) Georgia (new government, plus will help us control the spread of Islamic militants in the Pankisi Gorge), Eritrea (strategic seaports in the southern Persian Gulf, part of our Horn of Africa terrorism task force), Azerbaijan (strategically important in both establishing a foothold to prevent future Russian expansionism and in possible future military operations in Iran, God forbid thats ever necessary), as well as Uzbekistan (who despite an shaky human rights record is strategically important for similar reasons as the Azeris are).

Just because you haven't heard of these countries, doesn't mean they don't bring something important to the table, and that Bush sees the benefit of reaching out to them and expanding political cooperation now so that there will be better ties in the future is a point to his credit. The war has already given us new "Major non-NATO Allies" in two countries (Morocco and Thailand) that are very important strategically and with which we would not have had the opportunity to bestow that status upon if not for the Iraq war (i.e., absent the impetus, nothing gets done in Washington).