Serge Labbé: Trump says U.S. 'never needed' NATO. Canadian blood says otherwise |
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Serge Labbé: Trump says U.S. 'never needed' NATO. Canadian blood says otherwise
In Davos, President Donald Trump dismissed allies as staying "a little back" from the front lines. Retired Canadian Brigadier General sets the record straight on the sacrifices that saved American lives
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In a recent interview in Davos, Switzerland, U.S. President Donald Trump claimed that the U.S. “never needed” NATO allies and had “never really asked anything of them.” He added that allies “sent some troops to Afghanistan, or this or that. And they did — they stayed a little back, a little off the front lines.”
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I wonder if draft-dodger Donald Trump is aware that some 30,000 Canadians voluntarily joined the U.S. Armed Forces to serve in Vietnam, that 12,000 served in combat roles, and that 134 never made it back while 60,000 other U.S. draft dodgers sat comfortably back in Canada.
Serge Labbé: Trump says U.S. 'never needed' NATO. Canadian blood says otherwise Back to video
Trump and his Administration are void of the political acumen of former President George Bush senior (not a draft dodger — he served in the U.S. Navy during the Second World War and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross) who took the time, after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in August 1990, to build a coalition of some 42 nations prior to launching, with the support of a UN Security Council Resolution, Operation Desert Storm in January of 1991 to liberate the country.
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Among the member states of the coalition were Bahrain, Bangladesh, Egypt, Kuwait, Niger, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. It was the largest coalition since the Second World War. Unlike George Bush junior and the current president, the master Republican statesman understood that inclusive, multilateral interventions, wherever they may be, were more likely to succeed than whimsical regime changes… or unnecessary claims of unilateral domination of parts of the globe in what is, de facto, a global world.
And there was also the 1992 intervention in Somalia. Again, knowing that multilateralism under a robust Chapter VII mandate of the UN Charter authorizing the appropriate use of force, not only brought strength but also legitimacy to an overseas intervention, Bush senior built a coalition in an attempt to stop the internecine fighting between the warlords and provide the secure environment for humanitarians to stave off severe malnutrition and the death of hundreds of thousands in the fragmented country. One of his first telephone calls was to Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, who agreed to divert the Canadian mission to Somaliland to join the U.S.-led coalition focused on bringing a modicum of peace to the beleaguered south of the........