MUNICH, GermanyU.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates made a direct appeal to Europeans on Sunday to support the war in Afghanistan, warning that violence and terrorism could surge worldwide if NATO was defeated there.
While admitting U.S. policy mistakes and his own role in one of them Gates urged the allies to come together in the fight against Islamist militants in Afghanistan and said the credibility of NATO itself was at stake.
"The threat posed by violent Islamic extremism is real and it is not going to go away," Gates told an annual gathering of security and military experts in Munich, Germany.
"I am concerned that many people on this continent may not comprehend the magnitude of the direct threat to European security," said Gates, admitting public support for the war in Afghanistan was weak in Europe.
His speech was the latest move in a campaign he has undertaken sometimes quietly, sometimes through blunt public statements to persuade NATO allies to supply more troops and resources for the mission.
He said NATO could not afford "the luxury" of letting some nations conduct less dangerous missions while others did more fighting and dying a remark likely to annoy Germany, which confines its forces to the safer north of Afghanistan.
Gates branded Islamist militancy a movement built on false success, saying "about the only thing they have accomplished recently is the deaths of thousands of innocent Muslims while trying to create discord across the Middle East."
"What would happen if the false success they proclaim became real success -- if they triumphed in Iraq or Afghanistan, or managed to topple the government of Pakistan? Or a major Middle Eastern government?" he asked.
"With safe havens in the Middle East, and new tactics honed on the battlefield and transmitted via the Internet, violence and terrorism worldwide could surge," he said.
Hard Lessons
Gates cited more than a dozen attacks or plots against European targets, including bombings in London and Madrid, and recalled the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States .
"Imagine if Islamic terrorists had managed to strike your capitals on the same scale as they struck in New York," he said.
"For the United States , the lessons we have learned these past six years and in many cases re-learned have not been easy ones," Gates said. "We have stumbled along the way, and we are still learning."
Gates said the Sept. 11 attacks were especially poignant as the United States had been heavily involved in Afghanistan in the 1980s only to turn its back on the country after Soviet troops withdrew and it become a safe haven for al Qaeda.
He described the decision to abandon Afghanistan as "a grievous error, for which I was at least partly responsible."
Gates was a senior official in the CIA when it helped mujahideen guerrillas fight the Soviets and later served as U.S. deputy national security adviser and then CIA director.
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