Freep:
The Vermont National Guard announced
Thursday it will send nearly 1,500 soldiers to Afghanistan early next
year as part of Task Force Phoenix, a mission providing security
training to Afghan military and police forces.
Maj. Gen. Michael Dubie, the Guard’s commander, said the deployment is
the largest for the Vermont Guard since World War II. He said all of
the 1,448 Vermont soldiers in the deployment should be in Afghanistan
by March and return home by the end of 2010.
Normally I avoid comments on newspaper articles posted online because
they tend to be batshit insane, but this one was at the top of the
thread:
I as well fall under this deployment as
does my son. It's good to see that military folks themselves and their
families are speaking up with their concerns and questioning exactly
what the purpose and objectives are with Afghanistan. By no means is it
dissent or a lack of dedication to duty, but rather a serious doubt
concerning the whole intended and stated attempt to try and transform a
massive region with set ideological and corrupt foundations. The
saddest part of it all is the incredible silence on the part of the
population and elected officials who if our former president were still
in office would be not only protesting, but demanding answers to
justify continued deployments.
I observed that Code Pink is in fact protesting Obama's policy, demanding answers and lobbying to end our military involvement. Some of us have even written LTEs:
Despite my misgivings about some of
candidate Obama's policy stances -- Afghanistan in particular -- I
worked hard for him last year, being deployed as a deputy field
organizer by the campaign to New Hampshire. Sadly, of all the promises
he made before the election, the one President Obama chooses to pursue
the most vigorously is escalating the disastrous war in Afghanistan,
just as President Johnson did when he inherited Vietnam.
Our increased troop presence is further inciting Taliban and al-Qaida,
which continues to destabilize not only Afghanistan, but nuclear-armed
Pakistan, as well. As has been noted before, hope is not a strategy,
and our troops cannot defeat an ideology, which a RAND Corp. study
definitively demonstrated last year. At a time of economic crisis and
dire domestic needs, pursuing a losing war is an unthinkable waste of
our money.
It's long past time to put pressure on the president to rethink the
failed war that his predecessor launched. Thankfully, Rep. Peter Welch
not only voted against the recent supplemental funding bill, he also is
a co-sponsor of HR.2404, which calls for an Afghanistan exit strategy.
I urge all my fellow Vermonters to call or write the congressman to
thank him for his stand against escalation, and to contact Sens. Leahy
and Sanders on this issue, as well.
We cannot afford to waste more blood and treasure in the land where empires go to die.
Would that more people would join us in these efforts, no matter who's in the White House...
ntodd
