[speeder]

Right, so when Iraq was invaded by:

USA, UK, Australia, Poland, Netherlands, Italy and Spain (and Turkey threatened to invade in 2007 too), the fact they are all members of NATO is just coincidence, it is not NATO piling up on a single country.

Or Afghanistan:

US, UK, Canada, Germany, Australia, Italy, New Zealand

or Libya, france gave them weapons first, and invited the rest of NATO, that responded:

Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Denmark, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Romania, Spain, Turkey, USA, UK.

NATO can claim to be defensive and only about article 5, but the fact remains NATO will happily use their forces offensively and working in a cohesive group. You can't just say it isn't NATO because NATO is supposed to be defensive.

[dragonwriter]

> USA, UK, Australia, Poland, Netherlands, Italy and Spain (and Turkey threatened to invade in 2007 too), the fact they are all members of NATO is just coincidence, it is not NATO piling up on a single country.

Australia isn't a member of NATO (neither is New Zealand, which you claim at another point), and there were NATO members opposed to the invasion; NATO works by consensus, but isn't a supergovernment that dictates the outside-of-NATO foreign policy of its members.

> NATO can claim to be defensive and only about article 5

It could, but it actually doesn't.

It claims to be a regional security organization, and Article 4 is just as important as Article 5.

[BuckRogers]

If you know your history, you'd know that 9/11 triggered NATO's Article 5. It's the only time it was activated so far.

NATO kept us out of nuclear war for 70 years. It kept Soviet tanks from overrunning western Europe. It enabled stable democracies to gain a foothold safely in western Europe.

NATO is literally the only thing that stands between democratic states, which are the minority in the world (the North Atlantic region + some small states in Asia) and totalitarian regimes.

Mysteriously, a non-NATO nation is currently having a genocidal war waged on them. While NATO nations are free and safe. NATO is keeping the Free World safe.

If you hate freedom and representative government, if you find debates "too messy" and like easy-answer dictatorships, you should be anti-NATO.

[mongol]

Australia is not part of Nato. And you could equally well count in France and Germany as opposing the Iraq war, but it would not support your case.