For five long years, the bulk of the Belgian ISAF contingent in Afghanistan - 300 troops drawn from various units - has been guarding KAIA,
Kabul International Airport, a job I gather is considered the safest in the
Hindu Kush. The photo above shows two
Pandur troop carriers and two of the new
Dingo MPPV's (centre) on patrol in the greater Kabul area (apparently global warming hasn't reached Afghanistan yet). In addition to the KAIA guard detachment, a staff of 60 is performing the actual management of the airport itself. Finally there is a platoon-sized unit assisting the Germans in
Kunduz, primarily with demining activities. By contrast, our northern neighbour, The Netherlands, has been actively engaged in the fighting, its contingent being among the five or so NATO contributors which actually confront the Taliban on a daily basis. And the sight of body bags returning to Holland has become, unfortunately, a constant reminder of the danger the Dutch troops are facing. The bulk of the 2,000 strong force - with heavy
matériel at its disposal, including mechanized howitzers, scores of tracked AIFV's and
Apache attack helicopters, is engaged in the volatile
Uruzgan province. They get air support from six Dutch F-16 fighter bombers.
Over the past year, the pressure put on Belgium for doing more in AF has been growing steadily, and when US Secdef
Robert Gates recently warned against NATO becoming a
"two-tiered alliance of those willing to fight and those wo are not", he certainly must have had Belgium in mind - amongst others.
The Belgium interim government under
Guy Verhofstadt - he is to be succeeded by the Christian-Democrat
Yves Leterme on
March 24, but only fools believe that - has now announced, for the first time,
a truly active participation in the fight against the Taliban. Four F-16 fighter bombers and 100 ground personnel will be sent to
Kandahar Airfield (KAF), where they will join the six Dutch planes in an
Air Task Force. Even though the extra Belgian effort is still very modest, the Dutch are pleased with it. Like Gates, they have been asking for a long time for more support from their partners. Back in June 2007, right after the Belgian parliamentary elections, Dutch PM
Jan-Peter Balkenende called Yves Leterme - at the time everyone was still convinced Leterme would quickly assume the post of Belgian PM - and asked him
"Yves, do something for us in south Afghanistan!" Too bad for the Dutch
June 10, 2007 marked the start of the longest coalition talks in Belgian history, which would ultimately drag on for 192 days during which Verhofstadts caretaker government was unable to answer the Dutch call. And even then no satisfactory accord was reached, since pressure from the EU, which needed an active Belgian government to sign the
Lisbon Treaty, forced an interim government upon the Belgians - under Verhofstadt again! This interim government, in its second month now, is actually composed of the losers of the June 10 elections, but there is one bright spot: the disastrous Defense Minister
André Flahaut (Parti Socialiste) has been succeeded by
Pieter De Crem, a Christian Democrat who under Verhofstadt II had constantly lamented the demise of the Belgian military. And it is De Crem who has been the catalyst in the decision
to send the fighter bombers to aid the Dutch. To be sure, this is not the first time Belgian F-16's head to Afghanistan. Four other ones were deployed from KAIA two years ago, but Flahaut did not permit combat flights, only patrols. This time will be different, and the planes will be actively engaged to pound Taliban positions - a welcome reinforcement for the Dutch, be it, unfortunately, only from September on.
Socialists would not be socialists if they did not object to even this almost negligible contribution. Barely had the decision been announced or
Dirk Van Der Maelen, MP for the SP.a (Flemish socialists) asked for a parliamentary round to debate the deployment. To illustrate how extremely difficult it is in Belgium to pursue a realistic defense policy, including a responsible and fair attitude within the NATO framework, I'll now cite several top ranking SP.a officials:
a.)
Caroline Gennez, Chairwoman SP.a, a cunt of the first order.
"Belgium should not blindly wage a war. This is an unwinnable war. We absolutely disagree to send combat troops at a time when the conflict escalates."
b.)
Ludwig Vandenhove, Chairman of the Defense Commission in Parliament. Asshole Superdeluxe. Vandenhove on
February 7, 2008, during the debate on the mission in Parliament:
"If the government decides to commit our country and our soldiers to such a dangerous, lost war, it is only logical that this decision is explained as quickly as possible in Parliament. In addition, because of this engagement, Belgium will become more than ever the target of terrorist attacks."
c.)
Johan Vandelanotte, MP, former SP.a chairman. Wants to starve what remains of the Belgian Army by reducing its strength of 40,000 to 20,000 and cutting its budget in half. The money thus freed should go to development aid, even when it is crystal-clear that 50 years of extensive Belgian development aid in a.o. Africa has achieved nothing.
"Pieter De Crem is the errand boy of Balkenende."
d.)
Dirk Van der Maelen, MP and Fraction Leader for SP.a. A coward, a f*cking dhimmi and an outspoken enemy of corporate Belgium. Got himself huffed and puffed up two years ago in the Belgian press with a litany against
Paul Wolfowitz and the pay raise the latter gave to his girlfriend. Was less concerned about the fact that a certain
Sabine Steels, girlfriend of his mate
Patrick Janssens, the socialist mayor of Antwerp, landed herself without exams a cushy job as Antwerps "Safety Director" via a stop between Janssens sheets. But I digress. Van der Maelen on sending just four Belgian jets to AF:
"Now that George W. Bush sees the end of his term, he realizes all the more that he will enter history as the president who lost two wars (Iraq and Afghanistan). Hoping that American troop reinforcements can turn the tide in a lost cause, the US are pushing for more. But do we really want to go to Afghanistan to save the honour of Bush?
...
Therefore we plead to open the debate and, e.g., think about a bigger role for the UN. A greater UN-mandate directed at development and stabilization, reinforcement of the institutions... that is what the country needs. No poodle wagging his tail running after Bush without a thought, in the process wasting money which harms purchasing power or, worse, endangers the lives of soldiers and/or citizens."
[note from MFBB: I fail to understand how the purchasing power of Belgian citizens can be badly affected with a Defense budget amounting to 1.3% of the GNP. If Van Der Maelen was really concerned about our purchasing power, he might want to do something about our taxes, among the highest in Europe.]Just remember, these ball-less assholes are total military ignoramuses - I doubt there is even one among them capable of distinguishing a spare track for a Leopard from an ammo canister.
But there is more.
Money and defense, sometimes they
do go together for or moral betters.
A "high" mark in the not so brilliant history of Belgian contributions to NATO is the appointment of
Willy Claes to NATO Secretary General in
September 1994 - an function he held for a mere fifteen months, when he was forced to step down. The reason? The involvement of Claes in the so-called
"Agusta scandal", an affair whereby the socialist parties (both the Flemish and Walloon ones) received kickbacks for pushing the Belgian Army in
1988 to buy 48 mediocre
A-109 attack helicopters from the Italian helicopter maker
Agusta S.p.A.. Trials had revealed other choppers to be far better,
but Agusta sealed the US$267-million contract by paying the Flemish Socialistische Partij US$1.72 million in bribes. When the purchase took place, Claes was
Economic Affairs Minister. Six years later, as NATO Secretary General, he first vehemently denied any knowledge of the payments, then admitted that he had indeed been at a meeting where the kickbacks were discussed. As the investigation into Claes' involvement deepened, the affair began to stink to high heaven. Still, even as late as
February 27, 1995, the Vice President of the United States, a certain
Al Gore, deemed it necessary to issue a statement saying:
"The United States has full and complete confidence in Secretary General Claes."
It should be noted that Agusta was a state-owned company controlled by
Bettino Craxi's
PSI, the
Partito Socialista Italiano. If you still have the stomach to follow that link, yes, that's a hammer and sicle in the PSI's logo. The difference between Italian socialists and Italian communists is basically that the former have a better stocked canteen. Where was I? Oh yes, Claes. Back in 1988, when the decision to buy the A-109's was taken, two ministerial signatures were absolutely needed. One was the signature of Willy Claes as Minister of Economic Affairs, as we have seen. The other one was, of course, the signature of the Defense Minister himself. AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!! The Defense Minister in the late eighties was none other than
Guy Coeme, a Walloon of the
Parti Socialiste!!!!! By the time the scandal broke out, this illustrious predecessor of André Flahaut was being investigated not only for his involvement in the Agusta scandal - the PS
also received part of the bribes - but into another scandal as well, namely
the payment by French aircraft manufacturer Dassault of a 2 million US$ bribe to the Walloon Socialist Party for a contract to modernize the Belgian Air Force's F-16 and Mirage III jets in 1989. This affair became known as the case of
"The Three Guys", since the main protagonists were
Guy Coeme, the Parti Socialiste Defense Minister,
Guy Spitaels, the Chairman of the Parti Socialiste, and
Guy Mathot, a former Budget Minister from the Parti Socialiste whose most memorable quote regarding the Belgian state deficit was:
"the deficit came out of the blue, it will disappear the same way."
All three had to resign in
1994, and it seems the success of the investigation was due to the results of yet another investigation, namely the inquiry into the murder of a former Parti Socialiste Chairman,
André Cools, who was
shot in broad daylight in 1991 in Liège, reportedly because he had threatened to reveal nasty details about the party's finances - not that Cools himself was a saint, far from. However, you know how it goes in the Mafia. But the really interesting year with regards to the bookkeeping of both the
Socialistische Partij and the
Parti Socialiste was
1995, when
Etienne Mange , chief of the Belgian Postal Services AND Treasurer of the Flemish Socialist Party (and a close collaborator of Willy Claes) - was arrested in connection with the Agusta kickbacks. When Belgian magistrates discovered a secret bank account in Switzerland early in 1995, Mange confessed
that the Flemish SP had indeed received a gift of $160 million Belgian francs (the 1.72 million US$ from above, you will recall) from Agusta via a Swiss bank account held by
Luc Wallyn, a Belgian employee of the European Commission (as a sidenote, Wallyn was also vice secretary general of the Flemish Socialist Party). It was Mangé who sealed Claes' fate. He told the police that he had discussed Agusta's offer to pay bribes to the Flemish Socialist Party with a.o., Claes. Claes finally stepped down in December 1995. While it is entirely possible that even at that stage Al Gore still had full and complete confidence in the man - Socialists-'R-Us - most if not all NATO officials had by then distanced themselves from their chief, one US official saying that the real question
"was how Willy Claes could have gotten NATO Secretary General in the first place." He was right. In the early eighties, the Reagan administration installed tactical nukes in Western Europe, a.o. in Belgium. This to counter the threat of Soviet SS-20 tactical nuclear missiles already deployed. In Brussels, a giant demonstration was staged by the usual moonbats: 400,000 people, the largest in Belgian history. One of the prominent organizers was... Willy Claes.
And so we can conclude that you can always count on socialists to do the wrong thing after they have tried all the other wrong things. They were dead wrong in opposing US nukes while they were hunky dory with their Soviet counterparts - and one of the great unwritten books of that timeframe is the one dealing with the reportedly very intensive and friendly contacts which then existed between western european socialist parties and their comrades from across the Iron Curtain. They were dead wrong when Afghanistan was invaded by the USSR - I have been a keen follower of Belgian politics since I was 16, and I can assure you that our dear do-gooders never questioned the Soviet invasion - quite unlike another "invasion" in the region some five years back. They were dead wrong in the Agusta and Dassault scandals, and they were dead wrong in the first Gulf War, when the socialist Defense Minister refused to sell artillery ammo to the UK. And speaking of Iraq, they were dead wrong when they did everything to hamper the preparations for OIF, the lunatic André Flahaut at some point even threatening to deny Belgian airspace to US warplanes.
And now they are dead wrong in opposing the dispatching of a mere flight of four fighter bombers to Afghanistan to be deployed against islamic extremists of the worst possible kind - who just days ago blew up 80 marketgoers in the worst carnage since the country was liberated in 2001.
What do our moral betters from the SP.a propose then, apart from getting the UN involved? Well, as you probably know by now, Messrs. Claes, Vandenhove, Vandelanotte and Van der Maelen, to name but a few, are the co-authors of a pact between Belgium's so-called democratic parties to never talk or form coalitions with the
Vlaams Belang, Flanders' only truly conservative party. This situation is called the so-called
cordon sanitaire. With regards to the
Taliban, however, the gentlemen propose to hold talks with the "moderate ones" among them.
I get it. For socialists, talks with the VB are
haram. Talks with the Taliban however are
halal. You know what talks
I prefer?
I can't wait till those four F-16's start pounding Dirk Van der Maelens preferred speaking partners.
MFBB.
Last week, Bernard Kouchner, the powerful Minister of Foreign Affairs of France, announced that he is no longer in favor of admitting Turkey to the European Union. Mr. Kouchner changed his mind, he said, at the recent NATO summit in Strasbourg on April 4th. There, Ankara threatened to veto the appointment of Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the Danish Prime Minister, as NATO’s new Secretary-General. The Turks objected to Mr. Rasmussen because in 2005 he defended the freedom of expression of Danish cartoonists who had depicted the Muslim prophet Muhammad.
The bruhaha concerning Turkey's opposition to Mr. Rasmussen's candidacy for NATO Secretary General was "resolved" after a personal intervention by president Hussein. The president, on the photo seen during his recent visit to the Middle East, 
