A sign of a retreating empire. Thing is, the US could have the same international support it had 20 years ago against Afghanistan and Iraq and it would still lose to Yemen.

[–] zifnab25@hexbear.net 34 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

the US could have the same international support it had 20 years ago against Afghanistan

nods sagely

and Iraq

giggles slightly

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_of_the_willing_(Iraq_War)

The list of coalition members provided by the White House included several nations that did not intend to participate in actual military operations. Some of them, such as Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Palau and Solomon Islands, did not have standing armies. However, through the Compact of Free Association, citizens of the Marshall Islands, Palau and the Federated States of Micronesia are allowed to serve in the US military. The members of these island nations have deployed in a combined Pacific force consisting of Guamanian, Hawaiian and Samoan reserve units. They have been deployed twice to Iraq. The government of one country, the Solomon Islands, listed by the White House as a member of the coalition, was apparently unaware of any such membership and promptly denied it.

In December 2008, University of Illinois Professor Scott Althaus reported that he had learned that the White House was editing and back-dating revisions to the list of countries in the coalition. Althaus found that some versions of the list had been entirely removed from the record, and that others contradicted one another, as opposed to the procedure of archiving original documents and supplementing them with later revisions and updates

...

In the second debate in 2004 U.S. presidential election, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry questioned the size of the coalition participating in the initial invasion, saying, "...when we went in, there were three countries: Great Britain, Australia and the United States. That's not a grand coalition. We can do better". Bush responded by saying, "Well, actually, he forgot Poland. And now there're 30 nations involved, standing side by side with our American troops". The phrase "You forgot Poland" subsequently became a sarcastic shorthand for the perception that most members of the coalition were not contributing much to the war effort compared to the main three allies. The majority of the population in most countries involved did not, according to surveys, support the endeavour or their nation's participation

I'm old enough to remember when we called them Freedom Fries, because those gosh darn surrender monkey Frenchies wouldn't throw in with us.

[–] PanArab@lemmy.ml 16 points 2 years ago

Thanks for the additional information and fact checking.