U.S. - Spanish Relations Already Strained

Nice unilateral decision! I wonder where I've heard that complaint many, many times before?

Carme Chacon, Spain's current defense minister and former housing minister, made a quick phone call to NATO to say she is bailing on Kosovo (leaving) - then announced it publicly right afterward. Apparently this is not the way these things are done in NATO so everyone else is annoyed - even Barack Obama, and he doesn't annoy easily. This move could threaten Zapatero's invitations to the White House - or at least make them "uncomfortable".

Spain is not crazy about Kosovo's indepence goals, since they really are not crazy about some of their own region's independence goals. This seems to be the main reason they want out. However I am unclear on why Spain can not disagree with Kosovo becoming an independent state but still fulfill their obligations to NATO?

I also read in another account that Carme uttered that infamous phrase "Mission Accomplished" to her troops. Others seem to disagree with her since everyone else's troops have to stay. I guess Spain has a different interpretation of the "In Together - Out Together" philosophy that started the mission.

One side note, for some reason it annoys me that newspaper articles like this one (and not only El Pais) never remind the readers that the "ethnic Albanians" in Kosovo are Muslims, and it was the U.S. who intervened on their behalf. It was the U.S. and NATO who forced the Christian Serbians to stop the ethnic cleansing of Muslims (by bombing the crap out of them), and all this without a U.N. security council resolution. I don't know why that annoys me...