Obama Is Learning the Truth About the NATO Countries

I am not happy about this at all about the way. But it was a reality that too many Obama supporters wanted to wish away

Obama, Misreading Our NATO Allies From the Start
Then-candidate Obama, back in May of 2008: "Right now, we don't have enough troops, and NATO hasn't provided enough troops because they are still angry about us going into Iraq. "The news, today:

A day after his government collapsed, Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende said Sunday that he expected Dutch troops to come home from Afghanistan before the end of the year.
A last-ditch effort by Mr. Balkenende to keep Dutch soldiers in the dangerous southern Afghan province of Oruzgan instead saw the Labor Party quit the government in the Netherlands early Saturday, immediately raising fears that the Western military coalition fighting the war was increasingly at risk.
Even as the allied offensive in the Taliban stronghold of Marja continued, it appeared almost certain that most of the 2,000 Dutch troops would be gone from Afghanistan by the end of the year. The question plaguing military planners was whether a Dutch departure would embolden the war’s critics in other allied countries, where debate over deployment is continuing, and hasten the withdrawal of their troops as well.
“The moment the Netherlands says as sole and first country we will no longer have activities at the end of 2010, it will raise questions in other countries and this really pains me,” Mr. Balkenende told the Dutch television program “Buitenhof” in an interview on Sunday, according to Reuters.

The collapse of the Dutch government comes as the Obama administration continues to struggle to get European allies to commit more troops to Afghanistan to bolster its attempts to win back the country from a resurgent Taliban.

So here's a country with about 2,000 troops in Afghanistan. Iraq is calmer, our troops are gradually leaving that country, we've elected a president who opposed the war, and who spent two years pledging to carefully listen to allies. And now, they're not only not sending reinforcements, they're preparing to quit entirely. In retrospect, our NATO allies' disinclination to send more troops to Afghanistan for much of the past decade had very little to do with Iraq or George W. Bush, and a whole lot to do with their own populaces' de facto pacifism and isolationism. The Dutch people aren't convinced that this is their fight.Obama never understood what really drove our allies' decisions, and now he's learning that he can't influence them after all. Hard to pin this one on Bush, but I'm sure the administration will try.
02/21 02:26 PM Share

Update-
I should be clear. I am talking about Western European Nato Countries. Eastern Europe is still with us. Sadly though Obama ignores them or makes them mad. Which seems all counterproductive