Following is a copy of an email that I sent to you in Oct 2009. Since that time over 1200 of our young people have died in Afghanistan & Iraq, many more have been horribly maimed and disfigured:
Oct. 2009: "Bring the troops home from Afghanistan. It is unrealistic to believe that the current administration will do what is necessary to responsibly prosecute this military action. I understand that the complete destruction of the Taliban would be in the best security interests of this country; however, it is not realistic to believe that is going to happen under the current administration. Neither is the complete destruction of al Qaeda, which has havens and cells spread throughout the world. It is even unrealistic to believe that we can permanently deprive al Qaeda of Afghanistan as a launching ground or home base for terrorist attacks since that depends on wresting control of all territory in the region from the Taliban. I also understand how tempting it might be to some politicians to try and craft some politically advantageous half-measures that would leave our troops stranded in enemy territory (again) without a clear objective, exit strategy, or the absolute best support we can provide. To allow that to happen again, especially after what we learned in Vietnam, would be a tragedy and a moral outrage."
Today: Our troops can no longer call in close air support without getting it approved by higher-ups back at headquarters. Barack Obama has proposed requiring our special operations forces to conduct their ops only in daylight and his administration has leaked vital operational secrets to those who are trying to kill them. Iraq is helping fund Iran's nuclear program. Afghan troops and police are slaughtering our troops at will, troops that were unarmed while on base until just this week. The well-being of our troops has been subjugated to the ambitions of our politicians. Our calls to bring the troops home have been ignored and instead politicians have tied their hands and interfered with their attempts to employ tried and true combat techniques getting even more of our precious young people maimed and killed. Like I said: a tragedy and a moral outrage. We've got to stop this nation-building junk and get back to defending our country. Really, that's all we are able to do anyway. Focusing on anything else is recklessly dangerous and ridiculously naive.