Public Letter to Congress:
The main problem with democracies occurs when those who are suppose to control government, the people, make decisions not based in fact. Bush got us involved in a war in Afghanistan giving no thought to the future. Democracies thrive in America, Canada, and much of Europe because of our economies and our culture and those are the same reasons democracies don’t thrive in many others areas of our world. One has to want freedom first then they must work hard to find a way to pay for it.
Our economies give us the money we need to maintain a justice system backed up by law enforcement to enforce our laws. Our culture puts our freedoms and liberties on a higher plain than our religions. One fact we should have learned from our founding fathers is a democracy cannot live when religion trumps freedom. Afghanistan has no industry, no prospects for industry, and unlike Iraq has no valuable natural resources from which they can generate revenue to sustain a working justice system or support their own law enforcement a system very much needed to enforce their laws. Any improvements in that country must come from the pockets of mostly Americans. President Eisenhower understood this as he understood war and he made a wise decision over a half a century ago to keep us out of that nation, a wisdom Bush and our congress should have heeded. What little progress the Bush Administration made in its over seven years engagement came mostly from the wallets and at the expense of the American people. As for their culture, their religion is their life and it will tolerate not even the smallest liberties or freedom. Unlike most Americans who support the Afghan War, I have read their constitution and it is a document for which I would not spend one penny or shed one drop of blood to defend. It puts Islam before all else yet a recent poll now shows 47% of Americans support a surge in Afghanistan I suspect because they are ignorant of these facts that I have state because every war support I speak with tells me they don’t know these things and no longer support the war now that they do.
Obama ran on a platform that we were in the wrong war, meaning that we should not be in Iraq but in Afghanistan, but he was and is wrong, Afghanistan is not winnable or at least not in the sense that we can turn Afghanistan into a post war Germany or Japan. We have pumped billions into that country and as soon as our military pulls out of some so called success area, it returns back to the same harsh culture where all freedoms are trampled and those who supported freedom are murdered. To win that war the people of Afghanistan would have to moderate their Islam views and do as other democracies have done and build a wall between their religion and their government and I don’t believe they are willing to do this because they are unwilling to remove Islam from their constitution. To win that war, Americans are going to have to forever support with blood and their wallets the Afghan Justice System, their law enforcement, and their military because the nation will never be able to generate the revenues and no one is going to do this work for free. I wish it was possible for the entire world to enjoy liberty but to keep ours from being trampled by fraidy cats who want to pass laws claiming to make us “safe” is a daily battle.
Afghanistan reminds me or Senator Dale Bumpers when in the 1970s he went against the desires of the people of Arkansas by voting to give the Panama Canal to the nation of Panama. It wasn’t the popular thing to do but he showed leadership and history has now proven it was the right thing to do. Even our government has estimated that if we continue in Afghanistan we will be fighting this war for at least another ten years at an estimated cost of at least a trillion dollars and in the end what will be the return on eighteen years of war, countless dead, and trillions wasted? I expect far worst because after all, when has our government every gotten it right?
It is time to call an end to this waste and bring our military home and start investing that trillion that some wants to send in Afghanistan in our own country. We made the wrong choices after San Juan Hill and now Cuba is communist. We made the wrong choices after WWI and were forced to fight that war all over again in WWII and it took almost 50 years more before that war was truly ended. We made the wrong choices going to war in Korea and now almost 60 years later we are still paying, we made the wrong choices in Vietnam and while more than sixty thousands Americans paid with their lives, by getting out, history has proven that was the right choice. We made the wrong choice during the Iraq Iran war of empowering Saddam providing training and weapons that were used against our solders in two wars.We made the wrong choice by empowering and training bin laden to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan during the Reagan years and on 9/11 some Americans paid the price for that mistake. We made the wrong choice in the first Gulf War which turned our former ally, bin laden, against us and he used the training we provided him to kill Americans on 911. We made the wrong choice to invade Iraq, there were no weapons of mass destruction and we have now made Iran one of the strongest threats in the region. After a century of making the wrong choices we have the opportunity to make a right choice in Afghanistan. It is time to bring an end to that war and bring out military home. Please do as Senator Bumpers did and as those who got us out of Vietnam and be leaders and make decisions based upon the facts and not party politics.