NATO Struggles Over Who Will Send Additional Troops to Fight in Afghanistan

Condoleezza Rice shakes hands with a soldier of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).

None of the European participants want that, but in many countries they are facing publics that, to some degree, lump together the U.N.-authorized mission in Afghanistan—a legacy of the September 11 attacks and the U.S.-led toppling of the Taliban regime—and the deeply unpopular U.S. invasion of Iraq, with its tortured aftermath. Many Europeans contend that an Iraq-obsessed Bush administration allowed Afghanistan to devolve back into insurgency out of inattention and insufficient resources.

Whether that criticism is correct or not, Gates and others now hope to convince Europe that the Afghan effort falls into an entirely different category than the war in Iraq.