The LuLac Edition #2212, September 30th, 2012

Logo item from Richard Grayson Green Party blog. 

TIME TO GO…NOW 

2,000 LIVES TOO MANY

This morning while the rest of the world was waking up to the recaps of College Football scores, the pennant chase in Major League Baseball as well as the speculation of how the old NFL referees are going to do this Sunday, there was a news item that tore your heart out. Last night the 2,000th casualty of the war in Afghanistan was reported. Most of us know people who served, a few of us knew family members that lost a son or brother. Any type of wound like that is hard to heal. Any combat death is a tragedy. Since we have always been a nation that keeps score, (especially in late September and in the Fall on Sundays) the fact that this was the 2,000th death was another dagger to the heart. However what makes it worse is the fact that this latest casualty didn’t come at the hands of the enemy. This death didn’t come by a soldier’s actions saving his or her platoon. It wasn’t a heroic death you see in the movies where the soldier emerges from a firefight carrying two people under his arms and another to safety on his back. Nope. This death came because one of our soldiers, one of our Americans were killed by either an Afghan Army member we are training or an Afghan policeman that is supposed to protect the country. While I hesitate to say that any soldier’s death is senseless, this comes damn near close to that. It is time to leave Afghanistan. Screw the 2014 deadline. GET OUT NOW. Here’s why: 
1. It is unfair and unrealistic to ask an American soldier to put themselves in harm’s way when they are going to get killed by the people they are training to take over. What in the world are we fighting for? 
2. The Taliban is now back in action and instead of being a cooperative governing force, it is intimidating people they are supposed to work with. A diseased leopard can never change its spots. The Taliban is such an animal. By waiting until 2014, we are only strengthening the ammunition of the Taliban. Making them stronger. We’re giving cavemen who are very good at killing more expensive and complex weapons to do it faster. That has to stop. 
3. We should pack up all of our technology and equipment. If the sitting government wants asylum somewhere, we should give it to them. But surely they have to believe this is a lost cause. 
4. If we need to use Afghanistan for our protective interests in the Middle East, like say a terrorist network developing there, we should use drones to eliminate them. The Drone Technology is such that we can pinpoint the room where some target is staying. Maybe we should also put out the word that if the terrorist is a target, so too will be his family. Collateral damage. 
5. As a new country (we are closing in on 240 years,) we are still too idealistic and optimistic to understand the politics, religion and social truths of a second century society. It is a waste of time and lives of our fellow countrymen to concentrate on a country of savages. 
You can’t fight something you can’t understand. You can’t win the hearts and minds of the heartless and soulless. You can’t honestly say that whatever we did there was a success. It is time for the American military to leave. They should take their skills, their honor and their commitment to another conflict somewhere down the line. Preferably to a nation that thinks chopping off the hand that feeds them is an honorable practice. It’s time to let the bastards starve to death and rot in the desert hills they so cherish.