Posted on 09/26/2012 9:12:17 AM PDT by neverdem
Yesterday a concerned father forwarded to me a letter from his son in Afghanistan. I confirmed authenticity, and republish with permission:
Dad,
I am fed up. I cannot believe the lack of attention the recent changes in this war is receiving by the media or the country. I think I saw one thing on CNN about the following subject, but I had to dig extensively to find it. The purpose of this letter is to let you know of the garbage that our soldiers are going through right now. With this knowledge, I hope that you take action by writing your congressmen.
First, because of the recent green on blue incidents or "insider threats" as the new buzz phrase dictates, all coalition forces in Afghanistan have completely stopped partnering with the ANA, AUP, and ALP in order to prevent the death of anymore CF casualties by ANSF or Taliban disguised as them. This is also greatly spurred by President Karzi's indifferent attitude and lack of action to take measures to prevent further insider attacks.
Second, because of this massive change in policy (and complete change in mission) all U.S. forces are forbidden to actively patrol their AO and are to remain on their respective COPs/FOBs. There are only a few exceptions to this rule and they all pertain to "hardening" highway 1 in our AO. We have received orders that clearly state that all CF will no longer be allowed to drop air to ground munitions within the country of Afghanistan. This preempts Karzi's announcement that will be made shortly that states the above mentioned order, making it a tactical directive that he is ordering.
To the first point: Our mission in Afghanistan...
---snip--
So the question now becomes, what is our mission?
---snip--
So why are we here?...
(Excerpt) Read more at michaelyo.n-onlinecom ...
WWI was dumber.
There is some pretty stiff competition for that title.
Kosovo definitely deserves consideration.
Iraq was the dumbest. Just made Iran more powerful, and attacked the wrong people AND helped give us Mullah Obama.
and the war on poverty remains the dumbest.....
How about the war on drugs. Its been going on for 50 years.
When Michael Yon writes...I read. Thank you for posting this desperate letter. That young soldier sounds really frustrated. What can we do to help get the word out? I’ll contact my congressman and hope others will as well.
WWI was dumber.
Yeah, we should have backed der kaiser on that one....
That was the one I had in mind - with McCain and company grinning gleefully as we bombed Christians to save Muslims. At least Afghanistan was well-intentioned - I still don’t know what we were trying to do in the Balkans.
From a Viet Nam Vet
We should have stayed out of it.
http://www.michaelyon-online.com/americas-dumbest-war-ever.htm
We shoulda just bombed the sh#t out of ‘em (Iraq and Afghanistan) and got the hell out of there!
Winner!
The Spanish-American War was the most contrived...but the War Between the States could have been prevented if Buchanan had had the guts to order the arrest of those hotheads in Charleston harbor from the start...
But back then it wasn't intentional.
Not to give Buchanan that much of a pass, but he had no historical president to work with...no lessons from previous US history. I don't think he could have foreseen a bloody four-year civil war.
But Bush II and Obama both had the Vietnam precedent. The Afghanistan war is just Vietnam 2. When Bush II set up the original ROE with all that nation-building nonsense, he was simply repeating all the KNOWN mistakes of the Vietnam war.
Protect your Soldiers.
The word “commander” is traced back to Sanskrit and basically means “the one to whom we entrust our beloved”. To command is to be given a sacred trust. You are to protect the people we love. These Soldiers are our brothers, our sisters, our sons, our moms and our dads. We love them. We expect you to do your best to protect them.
Our President Obama is the “Commander In Chief”. He has been given a sacred trust, and he has crapped all over it. He doesn’t care any more about his Soldiers than he does about a dead cat on the side of a road. Unpleasant to look at but not his problem.
We pay this joker’s wages. We’re his boss. He needs to get his behind to the next twelve military funerals and serve as the OIC. I don’t think he’s capable of learning what he should from the experience, but I want him to look in a mother’s or widow’s or kid’s eyes and see what that loss means to them. This war is just national politics to him, but it’s life and death to Soldiers and their families and God damn him for not caring.
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