Earlier this week I wrote a blog suggesting that we withdraw now from Afghanistan. I have located a man, whom I usually do not agree with much of what he suggests that we do, but the latest blog he wrote is making more sense to me each day.
In Ex-Mayor Ed Koch's blog he notes as we all know, that OUR country is slipping into a deeper recession even though the stock market is having a Bear market rally this week.
Some of the drain, really lot of the drain on our economy is caused by the military expenditures to defend Iraq's who do not want us in their country, and to defeat a Taliban that was victorious over 6 divisions of Russian troops in the not too distant past.
What benefit is there to keep a military force in Iraq when we have already accomplished our stated goals of toppling the tyrant Saddam and restoring the Iraq military to a point where they can defend themselves.
There was a time when the Iraqis had one of the most feared armies in the Middle East. Having fought an eight-year war with Iran, the Iraqi army was battle-hardened. After disbanding the Iraqi army in 2003, we decided to put it back together. Now, six years later, it has hundreds of thousands of soldiers, trained by US personnel with US weapons, and it apparently still can't prevent the several thousands of al-Qaeda and Sunni terrorists from engaging in terrorist bombings.
What will make the Iraqis more capable of peacefully running their own country within the next 18 months? I believe the tribal killings there among the Shi'ites, Sunnis and Kurds based on historic animosities will continue after we leave - unless a repressive dictator akin to Saddam Hussein takes over. Rationally, Iraq should be divided into three separate countries - Kurdistan, Sunnistan and Shi'iastan - either totally independent from one another or, if acceptable to all, loosely confederated.
During the John Kennedy administration, his brother Bobby said a cogent sentence at least once. "We are not the policeman of the World"!
Since all the NATO "allies", except for Great Britian that has commited 2,000 additional troops to add to their 8,000 that are already there, have refused to send any more troops to the "killing fields" of Afghanistan. I believe it is wrong to ask our BRAVE troops to sacrifice their life and limb for a cause that even the neighbor Arab countries do not want to be involved in.We are looking for a GHOST, who may not even be in Afghanistan! Let Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the Emirates - provide the Afghans with military assistance. Why does it have to be primarily us?
Maybe it is time to withdraw our troops from all European Countries. EU states whose people really do not want us to be there in their countries in the first place. The expense of maintaining a military presence in Germany is prohibitive! We have saved Europe twice and the attitude toward the USA is mostly negative because we are still a free country that is hanging on to the free enterprise system. Not embracing Socialism like they have as yet!
The following in quotes is an excerpt from the Blog posted by Mayor Koch at NATIONAL REVIEW on line'
"We should not be spending billions in Afghanistan and Pakistan. If the governments of those countries cannot prevent the Taliban and al-Qaeda from taking over, our response to attacks upon the US emanating from there should be answered with bombs, not troops on the ground.I do not believe a country that accepted Taliban rule and defeated the undoubtedly brutal efforts of the Soviets to conquer it will ever accept the mores and political systems of the West.
We have a president with new ideas bent on changing the ways we provide for medical care, energy and education, while at the same time dealing with a financial crisis which is being compared with the Great Depression, and with budget deficits of more than a trillion dollars annually. Some of our leaders believe we can change the governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan and make them democratic. That is a fantasy.
While President Obama does not believe we should be engaged in so-called "nation building," his statement on Face The Nation on March 29 with respect to our roles in both Afghanistan and Pakistan belies that. He said, "Our plan does not change the recognition of Pakistan as a sovereign government. We need to work with them and through them to deal with AL-Qaeda. But we have to hold them much more accountable. And we have to recognize that part of our task in working with Pakistan is not just military. It's also our capacity to build their capacity through civilian interventions, through development, through aid assistance. And that's part of what you're seeing - both in Afghanistan and Pakistan. I think it is fully resourcing a comprehensive strategy that doesn't just rely on bullets or bombs, but also relies on agricultural specialists, on doctors, on engineers, to help create an environment in which people recognize that they have much more at stake in partnering with us and the international community...."
I believe there is a limit to what even the US can do, particularly when Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq have political cultures that are totally foreign to us and offend our sense of fairness and justice. Wake up, America.
We haven't won the war in Iraq, and we won't win in Afghanistan or Pakistan in traditional terms. Al-Qaeda cells, according to the US government, are present in 62 countries. The battle will go on for decades to come. Wherever possible, our response should be to use aircraft, manned and drone. Neighboring countries should put their boots on the ground, as those countries have the most to lose. We should use our special forces to attack and kill the terrorist leadership and not expose our regular army to daily attack".
Think about it! This man makes sense. Our threat is the North Koreans and we are technically still at war after 60 years, We have a cease fire that could be broken at any moment with the launching of a ballistic missile!
An do not for one minute think that our southern border is not porous enough to allow terrorists from any nation that hates us to infiltrate the USA to detonate a dirty bomb!