We promised to leave the country to the people.  I think it’s time to let them have their country back.  If they want our help to train their own army that’s fine.  We don’t need to fan the fires of aggression.  We can provide help but we don’t have to feed the hatred.

I’m sick of war.  Young men dying who can never have families or share what their gifts with families and the community.  They will never come again, and we have lost whatever wisdom or love they would have shared.

To make Afghanistan safe from the Terrorist we must find a way to make the people self sufficient.  The men need a way to take care of their families.  The need a way to earn MONEY.  In the south, where the Opium Poppies grow, the Taliban has control and threatens the people with death if they do not support their activities in the area—mainly the growing of Opium Poppies.  If you really want to help to people there is a coop in Kandahar that makes soap and body oils from the crops that the people grow on their farms.  Go to Arghand.com for the whole story and where you can buy the products here in the United States.

How many American lives?  too damn many—one is too damn many.

Ms. Cooney as a female Vet who saw the Pentagon first hand on 9/11, I believe the only thing we can do is follow the lead of the President and pray he listens to those who are in charge of all branches of the military before making any statements or taking any actions. The joint chiefs and the rest of his cabinet don’t know first hand unless they have been over there personally.  The things our gov’t can do is right out of the Spy Movies on TV, the satellites, the information gathering of operatives, the movies and books of today and the past are not far off the mark.

I would feel a lot more confident in trusting the Commander in Chief on this matter if he had been paying more attention to this.  Until the past 2 weeks he had only talked to his hand picked general one time for about 30 minutes in 70 days.  Clearly, this is not his priority. 

I suppose we could abandon that area to civil war, genocide, and lawlessness and create one, two or three failed states in the process.   And, truly, if all they did was kill each other, I would say it is a shame but not our problem.   But that is not their ultimate mission.  

These wars cannot be won because we will not do what needs to be done to win them.   Which is kill a whole lot of people, unfortunately,  innocents included but not targeted,  and convince the enemy that it hurts them more to fight than it hurts us.  I’m not saying that is what is the optimal thing to do from a moral standpoint, but it is from a winning the war standpoint.   There is a reason we have been in *quagmires* since WWII.  In Korea and Viet Nam we did not use full force.   (We didn’t need to in the Gulf War because we killed Iraq’s army but didn’t try to change the regime although I am one who thought we should have done so at that time and put an end to this nonsense). 

We don’t want to use full force.   In fact, I’m sure most of the posters on this site are apalled that POW’s are tortured with the threat of insects in their cells.   And part of me says…if we aren’t going to do it right let us not do it at all.   Certainly, I wouldl be glad to see my nephew come home from Afghanistan tomorrow.

I admire Harry Truman enormously.  He made the decision to use the bomb against the fanatics in Japan.  But he was a humane man and he never wanted to use it again and probably agonized over that decision until he died….thus the quagmire in Korea.  I’m not second guessing him, merely explaining why we will never again defeat an enemy decisively.    

But then, I know, we will be mourning another 2000 or more dead in a major American city and, instead of blaming the enemy who killed them, blame ourselves for fighting back.