Hardertr;
You are in the military in Iraq do you really want to "cut & run" ? Do you want to pull out now, trashing all the victories won by soldiers & Marines who went
before you, facing down thousands of terrorists door-to-door, street-to-street so you could have it much easier now, since the surge has proven effective ?
4,000 of these brave paid the full price..do you actually want to say " TS..you suckers, you died for no good reason !"?
If you do, you are very different from the Iraqi veterans I know who are my neighbors, my own family and now part of my American Legion post. I don't
know what your present job is, but it is bound to be easier than when the surge was instituted. My own grandson explained to me just how great was the
impact of the surge..he served before and again as the surge took hold....and he was no "FOBIT" (one who lives in a Forward Operating Base).
He would much rather go back again, than to let the enemy win because of political cowardice..he has "brothers" that paid the full price, and he doesn't want
their sacrifice to have been wasted..
Thanks for throwing out the tired old "cut & run" rhetoric...it shows you're open to discussion
I personally see Iraq as that old truck you just can't bring yourself to taking to the junkyard. You keep piling money and time into it, mostly because you're just too damned sentimental (or stubborn) to CUT your losses. We keep piling money and soldiers’ lives into Iraq….but the ultimate outcome is still a POS that is unreliable at best.
I don't know if you are familiar with the concept of a budget..... I hope you are; it'll make my next explanation make sense. Let's say you are on a fixed income, and you are a smoker. You enjoy smoking, and you like the camaraderie when taking smoke breaks with your buddies. You could quite (if you wanted to), but you don't mind "wasting" money on cigarettes. All of a sudden, your hot water heater explodes, and you don't have enough money to fix it...unless you stop spending money on cigarettes. You know you need to fix the situation with the water heater ASAP, or many other more serious problems will arise. What do you do? A sensible person would pull money from his smoke-fund and fix a problem that is indeed serious. We need to pull most of our troops from Iraq and RUN to fix the problem in Afghanistan/Pakistan. We simply DO NOT have enough troops to do both countries justice. The return (and justification) are far greater for cleaning out Afghanistan.
A couple more points: 4118 ADMITTED Department of Defense deaths, more to follow with a likely increase of daily averages if McCain is elected (the insurgents are patiently waiting on the results of our election).
Any force left here in Iraq will ultimately fall under the command of the Iraqi Army. How do you like the idea of YOUR ARMY being subordinate to Iraq? I know I want no part of it.
These “terrorists” we are fighting in Iraq are essentially militia. They would not be fighting us if we did not invade their country. The REAL “terrorist”, not the Shia militants we are fighting here, are in many countries….. VERY FEW are in Iraq.
And yes, unfortunately, I DO believe 4118 soldiers have been sacrificed to a war “for no good reason”. I DO however believe they died giving 110% to the protection of their brothers and sisters serving with them. I don’t give 2 $hits about this country or these people, but I’ll be damned if I’ll be the reason another soldier dies here. I’ll gladly do my job of protecting the coalition troops until my relief arrives, but you can’t make me support the reasons behind us being here.
You can go ahead and trash me if you want, just keep in mind that I am here fighting these horrible Iraqis that are threatening the lives of you and your family....OH WAIT....THEY AREN'T!