Heads up. FYI.
I am tending more and more to be anti-war. I am a conservative and love, love our troops. However, these endless wars and our men coming home maimed for life and even dead is becoming less pallitable to me. I want to know if both sides finance the wars and make tons of money and this is yet another redistribution scheme of wealth, courtesy of our rogue government.
Our military over in the combat zones are armed and killin’ bad guys.
I do want more R&D to find better ways to defeat IEDs.
Other than that I an content to have out troops over there killing them rather than the Jihadies running around the malls killing unarmed civilians here. We have enough Jihadies here already - we don’t need any more.
My passion for defending our country against a bunch of Muhammeds hiding in caves has been waned once the real enemy took control of our country.
Although not as sensational 3500 being crushed to death by big towers falling on them, I can guarantee that the tens of thousands of deaths of our family members and freinds because their healthcare has been rationed will be every bit as sad and horrific to us all in the long run.
I guess money we spend in Iraq and Afghanistan is money not spent on ACORN is the silver lining I see.
“dont tell foreign policythey did not really ask why their country was at war and Republican leaders did not tell, or bother,”
Pretty BS. The President had to defend his policy and position almost every friggen day.
Having been a soldier under Democrat leadership (Vietnam), I say the second a Dem becomes commander in chief it is time to bring the troops home. The only outcome will be you will be maimed or killed -— or neither of those but simply find the cause abandoned later on. The minute a pinko takes command it is time to turn the guns on Washington!
If we’d fought WW2 the way we’re fighting this “war on terror” (and I include Dubya as well as Obama) we’d still be working our way through Normandy and Guadalcanal.
As a conservative, the writer should know better than to buttress the left's anti-war talking points with the left's cartoonish characterization of the right.
The enthusiasm was for the defense of our nation in light of the horrific attacks that preceded it. But if he insists on denying Saddam Hussein's involvement in those attacks, if he insists on pretending there was no established relationship with al Qaeda, there's nothing I can do for the man. He'd rather believe the lie... it better suits his agenda. No fact(s) will move him from that.
All that being said, I want our troops home and I want them home now. It kills me to see them fighting for this monster they're forced to call a Commander in Chief. He means them harm and he will deliver. Evil is at the wheel now.
That is the biggest bunch of Ron Paul garbage I have ever read.
We conservatives, especially those of us who saw war, do not have "an enthusiasm for war," but we understand freedom isn't free and what it costs to have freedom, ours and others.
What all too many "anti-war" left or right fail to realize is that as you protest, hinder and undermine our efforts, you prolong it, instead of supporting get in and get it done.
If you have forgotten September 11, 2001 and why we engaged in Afghanistan, I pity you all and wonder who you will seek to keep you free in the future.
Even more pitiful is seeing left-leaning libertarians masquerading as conservatives.
I can boil down several existing problems about the US military.
1) The “Madeleine Albright” approach. As secretary of state, she directed unsupported, small detachments of US military to every corner of the world, to be nothing more than targets. The US currently has forces in 80 countries, but they are only critical in a half dozen places.
2) Having only a limited amount of resources, the US has decided to go for a very limited number of very advanced, and very expensive, systems. But quality must always be balanced with quantity, or the enemy will have the advantage of what they have neglected.
3) The US needs a Foreign Legion, much like the French Foreign Legion. But we need a mercenary corporation, like Xe (Blackwater) stationed outside the US, to provide high quality, light infantry duties for situations where it is just too expensive to use our armed forces. Things like peacekeeping and disaster recovery can get transport and logistical support from the US military, but if done by mercenaries, would only cost a fraction as much. Importantly, their leaders would be ex-US officers.
4) The congress needs to quit playing social engineering experiments on the military. The needs of the military are determined by the mission, not what a professor of “Lesbian Womyn’s Studies” at UC Berkeley thinks. Even more so, they need to quit playing games with the VA.
I am part of the “Anti-war” right for reasons described in this very article (infact I am more CONSERVATIVE) than some of them on the right- Remember during Clinton when conservatives railed AGAINST: ‘Nation Building’ & ‘Police Action’ by our military: I have returned to this position, and figure if you hamstring our military by “rules of engagement” (and give them a purposes for which they WEREN’T MEANT: NATIONBUILDING) then you’re better off briging them home?!
Whatever happened to the original mission in Afghanistan: ‘Get Bin Laden, and dismantle Alqaeda’? Instead we are battling the middle of an islamic civil war where most participants are stuck in mud huts.
I would be more in favor of the never ending war if our leaders were more upfront and admit they are “playing the great game” in Asia as was played in the late 19th by other players. It is of strategic importance primarily of hydrocarbon flows, but no all we get our lecures about muslim fanatics (greatly tempered by PC) and democracy.
Plus, I'm tired of the "War on Terror" targeting my fingernail clippers.
Maybe it's about time we realized we can't build up democracies in the ME...the best we can do over there, is contain the crazies (sadly)