THOUGHTS ON THE MIDDLE EAST

“KARZAI: AFGHANISTAN WOULD SUPPORT PAKISTAN IN A WAR WITH THE UNITED STATES”

When I read that headline in an article on Townhall.com I was shocked, but not totally surprised. When you sleep with snakes it is to be expected that you will be bitten. For the past ten years American military has protected Hamid Karzai and supported his Presidency with the lives of our very best young men and women and his statement is the thanks he extends in return. I believe without an American military presence, Karzai will not last two months.

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/danieldoherty/2011/10/23/karzai_afghanistan_would_support_pakistan_in_a_war_with_us

When is this country going to learn that you cannot and should not attempt to buy friends with hand-outs of money to recipients who have unclean hands? We have been doing that for years all around the world and you and I know what we have gotten in return.

On a related note, while I am glad to hear our military personnel will be leaving Iraq by December 31, 2011, I am convinced that we are departing before the mission is any where near accomplished. I also fear we may have to return.

In the meantime our President and Secretary of State blame President Bush for forcing our departure in order to provide Obama with political cover from failed negotiations with the Iraqi government regarding the legal safety of our troops. The administration’s statements that all American troops will leave are pure political rubbish, because in the next breath they talk about a robust American presence to protect our Embassy in Baghdad. We either have troops there or we do not.

This is the same double-talk when they said we did not have troops on the ground in Libya. We did and everyone knows we had Special Operations personnel calling in target coordinates for air support attacks. We had American military flying daily over Libya and we spent one hell of a lot of money in support of NATO. Lies are lies!

The free people of Libya have clearly spoken now that their ex-Dictator Colonel Gaddafi is dead. The Washington Post is reporting that Mustafa Abdel Jalil, head of the Transitional National Council, is pledging to replace the dictatorship with a more democratic BUT a more strictly Islamic system.

Isn’t that just great? After years of financial involvement, civilian deaths, loss of American military lives, and untold billions or maybe trillions of dollars we will be faced with a new Libyan government that will likely not be friendly to our interests and in fact work against us.

Back to Afghanistan – I repeat my call to get the hell out of there ASAP. We have not, and probably cannot, achieve our goals. The leaders (Karzai, tribal heads and others) are not supporting our interests now and will no doubt turn against us when we leave. Thus, why endanger our troops to further death and destruction?

Our government for the last two administrations has failed to achieve its reported goals in the Middle East. We should let the Islamic forces destroy themselves with their internal regional fights. If, and when they pose a direct threat to our country we have the capabilities to effectively return them to the dark ages and the sand mounds that have been there for centuries.

When will we ever learn to tend to our own business and leave foreign enemies to destroy themselves from within their own borders? All those Ivy-league liberal intellectuals who work in the White House and at the State Department do not have a very successful track record, and it is clearly time to clean house and get some sound, honest, patriotic leadership to bring order and sanity to the front.

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