I find it just a bit ironic that NATO has the nerve to ask non-NATO country Japan to deploy military assets to Afghanistan including combat forces when the vast majority of NATO countries won’t deploy combat forces themselves:

NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer says he hopes Japan will assume a bigger role in the reconstruction of Afghanistan, including possibly taking part in the NATO-led security mission.

Speaking at a forum in Tokyo Thursday, de Hoop Scheffer said Japan has yet to reach, what he called, “the limit of its possibilities” in participating in the operations of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan.

NATO commanders have complained that the current level of troops for ISAF is not enough to ensure security for Afghanistan, where the international force is battling a resurgent Taliban.

The NATO chief is to meet with Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda later Thursday. He also is due to hold talks with Japan’s defense and foreign ministers during his three-day visit.  [VOA]

Things must be desperate in NATO if the member countries are so cowardly that commanders have to ask a country with a pacifist constitution to deploy troops instead.  The reason for this is because countries like Australia that have been involved in heavy combat and taking casualties want other countries to pull their own weight and are refusing to send any more troops to Afghanistan.  Ironically like Japan, Australia is not part of NATO either.

Since the Europeans won’t send troops they want Japan to send them instead.  The further irony in all this is that the Europeans have just passed a resolution condemning Japan for their World War II past, but they want Japan to help them now.

This is all coming up in the aftermath of US and British troops recapturing the city of Musa Qala after the British had handed the city over to the Taliban with a gentlemen’s agreement that they wouldn’t cause any trouble.  Of course that failed and an offensive had to be launched to recapture the city.  The problem in Afghanistan is that after capturing territory their is not enough soldiers left to secure it and NATO actually expects the Japanese to be part of the solution to this problem.  Personally the US Marines sound like a better alternative to me.

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