(Enter Stage Right) — I am a supporter of our troops. I believe they are patriots and America’s best. I don’t question the bravery or skill of our troops it’s the imperial foreign policy which sends them as sacrifices on the altar of political ambition that I question.
The cruel calculations of political elites using our service men and women as pawns on their partisan game board are shameful. The most shocking example of this was President Obama announcing a surge in troops at the same time he announced the exit strategy for leaving the country. What could be more counterproductive than telling an asymmetrical enemy, “If you hang on long enough we leave and you win.”
Look at Iraq. We went to war to stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction which even President Bush eventually admitted were never there. We went to war because our leaders intimated that Iraq had a hand in the sneak attacks of 9-11 based on a rumored meeting between an Iraqi agent and Mohamed Atta another claim that has since been repudiated. Did we go to war to correct the partial victory we gained in Gulf War I under George I? Did we go to war as George II later claimed to make the Mideast safe for democracy? Whatever the reason for invading Iraq, a nation we supported for years, a nation which had not and was not planning to attack us, what did we accomplish and what do we have now that we are gone?
What about Afghanistan? After the sneak attacks on 9-11 we had every legal and moral right to attack the nation that harbored and protected Al-Qaeda. The whole world supported our right to punish those who had so cruelly attacked us.
