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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHollande victory shakes up NATO's Afghan war plans
By Laurent Thomet (AFP) 12 hours ago
BRUSSELS After pledging to speed up France's pullout from Afghanistan, incoming president Francois Hollande will soon have to reassure NATO allies about his decision to end combat earlier than planned.
Hollande made a campaign promise to start bringing 3,300 French soldiers home this year, ending his country's combat role two years earlier than NATO's carefully crafted plan to fully hand security control to Afghans by 2014.
"I believe that, without taking any risks for our troops, it is the right thing to withdraw our combat troops by the end of 2012," Hollande said last week.
The Socialist leader will bring this message to fellow NATO leaders when they meet at a summit hosted by US President Barack Obama in Chicago on May 20-21, just days after Hollande's oath of office.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iwccq1O1p3mQzDnyEJy63D4eyRvg?docId=CNG.6b175e9d892727e68165f36988be7403.861
There you go. That's how you do it.
loudsue
(14,087 posts)NATO hadn't planned on this, certainly.
Tierra_y_Libertad
(50,414 posts)We lost. Get out. Get over it.
movonne
(9,623 posts)right before our eyes...countries turning left...and maybe Obama is part of it...just think how Obama spoke before all these countries when he was running for president...
quinnox
(20,600 posts)from the right wingers. I can see it already.
Anyway, if we don't fight them over there, we will have to fight them over here. Nope, this saying during the Bush admin still doesn't make any sense.
datasuspect
(26,591 posts)this whole "terra," OBL, war, afghanistan, Iraq - the whole bloody lot - was all contrived nonsense and lies.
OBL goes from global enemy number one to basically being labelled a lone nutbar, isolated by al qaeda, and basically made ineffectual because he lost his mind.
What? because obama killed him?
OBL was never a threat, it was always PR and advertising, and a way to justify a permanent state of war with corresponding record profits.
bullshit. all of it.
kenny blankenship
(15,689 posts)And there's nothing we could say to change your mind? I don't know why you would want to miss out on a sweet deal like ten more years of propping up the Karzai family, François, but if that's how you really feel then that's the way it is.
bemildred
(90,061 posts)The Plan: The National Command Authority orders all US forces redeployed out of Iraq within one month and out of the theater in two months. Any commander that fails to meet the deadline will be summarily relieved, and replaced with a commander that will thereby be placed on a shorter timeline. I can promise anyone who has no experience of the military that this is perfectly feasible, and that with that kind of command emphasis, the mission can and will be accomplished.