NATO Aggravated Enuf to Recognize & Cut Its U.S. Puppet Strings?

Craig Murray was a member of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office for over 20 years. He served in 5 countries and took part in 13 formal international negotiations. As a result he declares:

I have in consequence a great many friends among ex-colleagues in both British and foregin [sic] diplomatic services, security services and militaries.

I lost very few friends when I left the FCO over torture and rendition. In fact I seemed to gain several degrees of warmth with a great many acquantances [sic] still on the inside. And I have become known as a reliable outlet for grumbles, who as an ex-insider knows how to handle a discreet and unintercepted conversation.

Mr. Murray asserts that NATO is terribly unhappy with what is happening, not only with Israel and the United States concerning the Gazan flotilla attack, but also with the U.S. in Afghanistan.

First the Israeli issue:

What I was being told last night was very interesting indeed. NATO HQ in Brussels is today a very unhappy place. There is a strong understanding among the various national militaries that an attack by Israel on a NATO member flagged ship in international waters is an event to which NATO is obliged - legally obliged, as a matter of treaty - to react.

I must be plain - nobody wants or expects military action against Israel. But there is an uneasy recognition that in theory that ought to be on the table, and that NATO is obliged to do something robust to defend Turkey.

Mr. Murray stresses that to the NATO military officers, "the freedom of the high seas guaranteed by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea" is a major priority. Turkey was shrewd, Murray adds, in calling an emergency NATO meeting after the Israeli attack. Obama's weak response to the attack was not only offensive to Turkey, but to NATO, a very vital organization to the United States.

Murray goes on to say that NATO HQ is very unhappy with the Afghanistan war.

There are already deep misgivings, especially amongst the military, over the Afghan mission. There is no sign of a diminution in Afghan resistance attacks and no evidence of a clear gameplan. The military are not stupid and they can see that the Karzai government is deeply corrupt and the Afghan "national" army comprised almost exclusively of tribal enemies of the Pashtuns.

You might be surprised by just how high in Nato scepticism runs at the line that in some way occupying Afghanistan helps protect the west, as opposed to stoking dangerous Islamic anger worldwide.

Murray points out that the financial problems sweeping over Europe are impacting "every European military." He continues, "The only glue holding the Afghan mission together is loyalty to and support for the United States." Murray also speculates what the NATO members after such substantial loyalty and support of the United States, especially the serious loss of lives, really think of the United States and the Obama administration that could not even make a decent, respectful "gesture to support Turkey" especially while considering that Turkey is a NATO member, and was attacked by a NON-member.

Here are Murray's "money quotes" which perhaps foreshadow trouble ahead for the willfully-blind-crony United States government in terms of Israel and with its quagmired status in Afghanistan:

Even the Eastern Europeans have not been backing the US line on the Israeli attack. The atmosphere in NATO on the issue has been very much the US against the rest, with the US attitude inside NATO described to me by a senior NATO officer as "amazingly arrogant - they don't seem to think it matters what anybody else thinks".

Therefore what is troubling the hearts and souls of non-Americans in NATO HQ is this fundamental question. Is NATO genuinely a mutual defence organisation, or is it just an instrument to carry out US foreign policy? With its unthinking defence of Israel and military occupation of Afghanistan, is US foreign policy really defending Europe, or is it making the World less safe by causing Islamic militancy?

I leave the last word to one of the senior NATO officers - who incidentally is not British:

"Nobody but the Americans doubts the US position on the Gaza attack is wrong and insensitve. But everyone already quietly thought the same about wider American policy. This incident has allowed people to start saying that now privately to each other."

Maybe time for NATO members to stop enabling an amoral perpetrator of violence and injustice, one that makes the world ever more insecure and unstable.