No shit, Sherlock, I’ve spent two years overseas and had many a haji try to kill me. What’s your point?
If we don’t have the will to win, we need to leave, fine, but don’t denigrate someone for pointing out the EXACT reasons why we’re over there. I hated every one of those POS hajis over there, and I wanted nothing more than to nuke the country and go home, but I was able to calm myself down by admitting I’d MUCH rather kill those bastards over there than fight them over here. That’s an important statement that Marie made, and, given that she has also paid a price for the GWOT (far more than most people), she deserves a tad bit more consideration than being called a “kool-aid drinker.”
I know the "reasons" given. We have had those same reasons since Bush took us there way back when this started. Karzi is in power, Bush is out of power, Karzi is working with the enemy, Obama's DOD is run by a bunch of egg heads who run the war by polls and fear of CNN.
A new generation, (not to disrespect the thousands dead Americans) has entered still clueless as to why we are there trying to change the minds of people utterly living in the Stone Age.
Read a little history, Alexander the Great ran over the world and his end came in Afghanistan, the fall of the Soviet Union can come down to being out spent military, how much do you think they spent fighting a war without end in Afghanistan?
I have no ill feelings towards FReeper Maria, I wish for her family that her husband was home safe.
If the upper brass of the military refuse to fight this war in a matter to win, than Maria's husband, my friend and the thousands of other of troops are nothing more than easy targets for some nut with a bomb strapped on them! You are dealing with an entirely different method of thinking.
When the US started heading West in the early 1800s, many missionaries followed. Many of those missionaries were scalped and had their bodies chopped up and paraded by various Indian tribes. Some people will not be changed no matter how "nice" you want to be towards them. When they are born and raised on hate and anger, do you really think they are going to drop their guns, leave their goats and sing "Yankee Doodle Dandy"?
Get with reality, I've studied military history since I was a child down to the tactics used by the Romans against Carthage. And I can site wars dating back to the Mongols using bodies of their victims in order to climb over "indefensible walls". History repeats itself. Alexander the Great, the USSR, and now the US, it ain't going to work. You can't will something to happen.
And the truth is everyone right now is dying in vain and I don't blame the troops I believe the idiotic leaders of the ilk of Mike Mullen who simply refuse to use the weapons we have which could utterly obliterate the Taliban in three days.
Thank you FSE. You get it.
We had a good purpose. The problem is that Afghanistan was a half-hearted effort until this last year. I’ve been disgusted with this whole situation until recently.
Now I’m frustrated because we’ve finally got the surge going and everybody’s too exhausted to continue. Our military is not, and never has been, equipped for nation-building. The system is designed for fighting, not this. So it’s slow, inefficient and time-consuming.
Now everybody wants to give up. NOW it’s a friggin’ waste.