We should have sent nobody to fight on Attu. The Aleutians campaign consumed an astounding proportion of US military resources in the war, and there would have been no harm in just letting the Japanese sit on the islands and rot till the end of the war.
Yep, too many forget that the military is another government bureaucracy.
Great advice in 20-20 hindsight. But, at the time, there was serious national pride issues at stake with the enemy occupying sovereign U.S. Territory.
The Japanese were dumbfounded when we made no move to counter the initial occupation in June 1942. The main purpose of the occupation was to divert us from Midway. Little did they know that we'd cracked their naval code and were focused on the big prize.
With Attu retaken, the US now posed a potential threat to Japan's Kurile Islands and Northern Territories that it would have to at least take into account, diverting its attention from other battle fronts.