Re: I've never been so ashamed...
Testament;1765964 said:
I was more terrified of Sarah Palin, John McCain himself I could tolerate, but not her.
As for your 2nd comment, sure people have died, but did they have to? Was is worth it or necessary in the first place? That's Bush's fault, so pulling out now will spare even more unneeded deaths.
Don't you ever tell me they died in vain. Some of us believe in what we're doing, and are willing to risk our lives for the cause. Every time I left the wire, I knew I might not come back. That didn't stop me, it didn't stop John McCain, and it didn't stop the fallen.
It's not "Bush's fault." It's easy to blame a tough war on a scapegoat. Should we have gone in, in the first place? It's questionable. We haven't found any weapons of mass destruction. It looks like we may never find them. But if they're not there now, they were 15 years ago, and they were used. Or do you think those thousands of Kurds died of natural causes?
Regardless, we're there now, and leaving won't spare anyone. Afghanistan and Iraq are not stable. They're not ready to stand on their own. Once we leave, the terrorists will be the most powerful presence. The Taliban is far from extinct, and it will come to power again if someone isn't there to suppress it. The legitimate governments aren't strong enough to do that yet, but they will be in a few years.
If we back down now, it will be as if we were never there. Then, those deaths really will have been unnecessary, for we will have changed nothing. On 9/11, I swore to "never forget." Leaving now would not only be forgetting 9/11, but also those thousands of American soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen. It would be forgetting the the hundreds of thousands more who've been over there fighting. It would be forgetting the people we went in to save.
I'll share with you a story from my own experience over there. During OEF VII (2006-2007) I was part of a Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) in Afghanistan. We went to a police station in the Kharwar district of Paktia Province for a humanitarian aid drop - bringing food, tools, school books, medicine, and the like for the people in the town. We used the police station's walled compound to control the crowd, and with the assistance of the local police and village elders, we gave out the supplies to the local people. We monitored who had already received a goods by marking their hands with a permanent marker. When our supplies were exhausted, we packed up and left. We received word shortly thereafter that the Taliban came through once we had left, found everyone with a marked hand, and cut that hand off or killed its owner outright.
There's a couple of things I'd like you to take away from this, if you've taken the time to read it. Firstly, the Taliban is still there, and they're strong, but the people like us and are willing to accept our help. But when we leave them, they're punished for it. If that's the cost for accepting a few bags of rice, I'd hate to see what happens to people who dare to vote when we leave them unprotected. I'm sure more than a few of those people wondered where their benefactors had gone with their last breaths.
Furthermore, all of this happened in the immediate vicinity of that police station. This means the police either turned a blind eye to it, or did it themselves. It's no secret that the Afghan National Police (ANP) is riddled with Taliban supporters. This is because there's so little money and so much corruption in the government yet. In most cases, a police officer is his family's sole bread-winner. It's not uncommon for the police to go months without getting paid. So when a Taliban supporter offers a cop a week's salary to ignore the planting of a landmine, of course he's going to take it. It's a difficult situation.
But it's getting better. The corruption is greatly improved from what it was a few years ago. The Afghan National Army (ANA)'s progress has been very good. We've built schools, hospitals, orphanages, clinics, wells, power plants, government buildings, and lots of other projects to improve the infrastructure and make good government possible, and we're making great strides.
We need to stay there until the job is done right.
