Allies offer 7,000 soldiers to bolster the surge in Afghanistan
Following prodding from U.S. secretary of state Hilary Clinton and British foreign secretary David Miliband, at least 25 NATO countries are pledging to send an additional 7,000 soldiers to Afghanistan to aid in the U.S. troop surge. “We all know that in the 1990s, Afghanistan was the incubator of international terrorism, the incubator of choice for global jihad,” said Miliband. “The badlands of the Afghan-Pakistan border are a threat to people everywhere, whatever their religion, and that’s why it’s very important that we make progress.” The U.S. is planning to send 30,000 troops to the war-torn country, in addition to the 71,000 it already has on the ground. But some skeptics claim NATO’s announcement won’t make much of a difference. Professor Eliot Cohen, a former advisor to the state department, says European nations are normally averse to combat, and they’ll use “accounting tricks,” instead of actually adding troops on the ground.