Sunday, September 30, 2012

Team Work

"American deaths in Afghanistan hits 2,000"

     What a headline to start my Sunday morning with. I guess the headline would be too long that reads "They don't want us there, we don't want to be there, people are dying for no reason, nothing has changed there...so why are we still there?"
     The troubling thing is that there is no cause to believe in, no way of looking at our presence in Afghanistan that makes you either patriotic or not. There's a team goal here that most of the team doesn't understand, and it is completely unachievable even if you do get it.
     There was a show on TV about a group of US military explosive experts that had the job of clearing a one mile section of dirt road in Afghanistan, to provide access to a bridge. After 5 days and the loss of many vehicles to explosive devices, the detonator of which was hiding out in nearby dwellings, they had only "cleared" 800 yards of road.
     It's just discouraging to be part of something that you don't believe in, yet there is nothing you can do about it. I feel a letter to my Senators and Representatives coming on...those are always so productive. Maybe if we all told them how we feel? I haven't spoken with anyone who thought we should be in Afghanistan or any other part of the Middle East, so I think the feedback they would receive would be that the people they represent and who elected them want our military to be removed from the Middle East.
     Here's a headline...
"America's presence in countries that would collectively prefer to strap on a continental sized underwear bomb and destroy the US reaches zero."

If Iran developing nuclear weapons threatens world peace, which it does, then the world needs to step up. The US...I mean the UN (including all of its members, even France) needs to protect world peace.