Noah Rothman
Hot Air
9/3/2014
…26 days after the September 11 attacks, Operation Enduring Freedom commenced in Afghanistan. The campaign to oust the Taliban from power, rid the region of al-Qaeda, and build a sustainable post-war Afghan government eventually involved 58 nations, many of them non-NATO members. In Iraq, 45 nations joined the United States in the March, 2003 mission to oust Saddam Hussein from control in Baghdad. By April, Angola and Ukraine had committed to joining the mission, raising the total number of coalition countries including the United States to 48.
Traditional American allies like Canada, France, and Germany objected to the Iraq War and refused to participate in initial combat operations. The United Nations, too, declined to sanction the campaign to change the regime in Iraq. This gave birth to the prevalent myth that the United States engaged in a unilateral operation in that Mesopotamian nation.
This is powerful lore, and it is enjoying new life as commentators and politicians and seek to defend Obama’s strained efforts to justify an indirect response to what his White House has determined are “terrorist” attacks on the United States.
“As devastated as we ALL are by these tragic beheadings, we cannot allow this to turn into a ‘go it alone’ foreign policy in Iraq,” Huffington Post commentator and university professor Marc Lamont Hill wrote…
…There is no question that the months-long run-up to the Iraq War was plagued by diplomatic bungles, and that is an experience which none should be eager to repeat. It is, however, nothing less than revisionist history to suggest America acted unilaterally in Iraq…
The complete article is at HotAir.com
