A Bungled End to the War in Afghanistan

It is finally over...almost The 18-year war the United States fought in Afghanistan, to defeat, er, rather, to bring to justice, that is, not lose any ground to…uh, Osama bin Laden, no-no, al-Qaeda, I meant, the Taliban, wait, we’ll just call it terror…has ended, maybe in 14 months, with a truce signed February 29, 2020, by the U.S. and Taliban representatives in Doha, Qatar. Strangely, it was U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, not Mike Pompeo, who signed for the U.S. even though Pompeo was at the signing, almost as if he knew there was dishonor in signing it. 
        The current Afghan president Ashraf Ghani was not included because “talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban are due to follow.” In other words, they haven’t started yet. This treaty, or truce, or whatever it is, is strictly between the U.S. and the Taliban. Trump left it up to the Taliban to make peace with the Afghan government. This took Ghani by surprise and he lashed out at several points Trump guaranteed the Taliban. For one thing, Ghani will NOT agree to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners! The Taliban immediately responded that they “would resume fighting Afghan forces.” Think there will be any lasting peace once U.S. and NATO forces leave?

In the name of peace......fire!

        While it appears this could be more of a withdrawal or retreat without surrendering (like a poor man’s version of the truce we have with North Korea where technically we’re still at war) than a treaty document, Pompeo claims the Taliban has committed to certain peace moves that aren’t clearly spelled out (about like Trump wrangled from Kim Jong Un at Singapore – a lot of words but no substance), but somehow this is a glorious day for our military and a bold move by Trump. The Taliban has however continued to gain momentum and last year the BBC found they were in control of 70% of Afghanistan. When the U.S. invaded in 2001, the Taliban controlled about 55%.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urgently stressed "the importance of sustaining the nationwide reduction in violence, for the benefit of all Afghans" in the looming withdrawal of U.S. forces in areas that have been repeatedly contested. All the Taliban has to do is wait until U.S. forces flee and then any ‘contesting’ will be to their advantage. We are leaving the NATO troops to fend for themselves. We are leaving President Ashraf Ghani and the Afghan government high and dry, defenseless, and without a fallback plan. Trump is simply withdrawing our forces, destroying what equipment is left that we don’t want to fall into someone else’s hands, stuffing the flag in a bag and hightailing it out of Afghanistan like rats deserting a sinking ship. Surrendering is the foremost trait of a coward.

Did we win, draw even, or at least can hold our heads high? No.

         But I am celebrating the end of the U.S. involvement in the war. Not for a second do I believe the killing has ended. It is just the end of U.S. military forces doing a majority of the fighting, killing, and being killed. So, what did they ultimately die for? To Trump, what does that matter?
The U.S. suffered over 2,400 KIAs, over twice that number injured. NATO troops paid in blood with over 3,500 casualties. Between the Taliban and US-led forces, well over 50,000 Afghani civilians were killed simply to fight, or prop up, an unpopular government (that Bush and Cheney thought would do their bidding.) The U.S. tried to fight the war in a more streamlined way, yet in a similar fashion to the Soviets. It’s no wonder we couldn’t succeed. The British discovered the same damned thing earlier in the century. Afghanis have to settle Afghanistan’s problems and challenges. Anyone else involved in their ceaseless feuding unites the Afghanis just long enough to savagely bleed the invaders, drive them out, and then they go back to killing each other as they’ve done for centuries. Their fighting is religion-based with the Sunnis and Shiites believing the other holds a heretical view of Islam, deserves no mercy, and must be destroyed. The Taliban is the political and military muscle of the Sunnis in Afghanistan. As long as any religion is used to justify bigotry, hatred, differences, and divides, the killing won’t stop.

Does Trump deserve credit for ending U.S. involvement? Yes, in the same way that the driver who crashes a car into a wall to stop the pinging noise in the engine is responsible for putting an end to the annoying sound. Trump didn’t have many options in order to get out without actually surrendering. Plus, this is an election year; he needs something to brag about since the coronavirus and the slowing economic conditions around the world are going to impact how he is viewed. And while he’d never admit it publicly, the germ-o-phobe in Trump has him near panic over the coronavirus. This is what happens when you don’t read. Trump spends more time watching TV, refuses to learn or listen to others, and has the least scientifically-inquisitive mind of any president in history. Does anyone trust Trump to come up with a responsible plan that he just staples together on the fly? Trump is retreating from the world because he doesn’t know what to do, he doesn’t understand foreign policy, diplomacy, and honoring our word. So in order to avoid the realities of dealing with a world he’s too ignorant to understand and work with, Trump retreats from it like a turtle pulling back into its shell but puffing himself up to project a tough guy image to a world that is not even looking in his direction anymore.

        Here is Trump qualifying his ending the war, as reported by the BBC. Speaking at the White House, Mr. Trump said the Taliban had been trying to reach an agreement with the U.S. for a long time. (Yes, the Taliban has been trying to get the U.S. to leave for 18 years!)

        He said U.S. troops had been killing terrorists in Afghanistan "by the thousands" and now it was "time for someone else to do that work and it will be the Taliban and it could be surrounding countries". (If Trump is saying the Taliban will now have to kill ‘the terrorists,’ then who have our troops been killing for 18 years? The U.S. has been switching designated enemies from al-Qaeda or Taliban to terrorists since 2002 right after U.S. troops ousted the Taliban from Kabul. Who are the 'surrounding countries' who should now step into Afghanistan's affairs? Iran? Pakistan?)

        "I really believe the Taliban wants to do something to show we're not all wasting time," Mr. Trump added. "If bad things happen, we'll go back with a force like no-one's ever seen."

Check out Trump’s language: “If bad things happen, we’ll go back with a force like no-one’s seen.”

Really?

You’ll go back after you turned tail and ran? You got nothing for your treaty. The Taliban agrees to “not to allow al-Qaeda or any other extremist group to operate in the areas they control.” How about in areas they don’t control? How will that be enforced once U.S. and NATO troops are gone? What constitutes “bad things?” But the ‘reveal’ so to speak, might be the phrase “no-one’s seen.” If you don’t do anything, will anyone see it? Trump is a coward to his core. He’d no more go back to Afghanistan than he’d go back to Marla Maples.

This Afghan debacle is a war George W. Bush launched immediately after 9/11 in which we never should have been engaged. Afghanistan didn’t attack us, Iraq didn’t attack us. Elements of bin Laden’s al-Qaeda attacked us and they were spread across the Middle East; from Saudi Arabia to Indonesia, with a heavy concentration in Pakistan. Yet Bush chose Afghanistan because he thought - as primitive as they appeared to be - the Taliban would be easy to knock off and he could claim he was keeping the caves in eastern Afghanistan out of al-Qaeda's hands. Now, Trump is ending it like the fiasco it has been for the U.S. all along; like a cowering cur with its tail tucked between its legs, limping off the battlefield dragging the flag in the mud behind it. This is Trump’s foreign diplomacy. This will be his legacy. He has no honor, and he has no pride in anything except when he looks in a mirror.

            Addendum-dum: On March 4^th, Trump authorized dozens of drone airstrikes on Taliban positions in southern Afghanistan after the Taliban launched numerous attacks on Afghan Security Forces on March 3rd, which is exactly what the Taliban said they’d do. They did not attack US forces, but Trump ordered US forces to respond. This will unravel any treaty and I fully expect Trump to accelerate withdrawal in an almost panic mode that will increasingly appear to be a rout of US forces.

Trump told reporters on March 3^rd that he spoke on the phone with the leader of the Taliban, He stated, “We’ve had a good conversation. We agreed there’s no violence, we don’t want violence. But we’ll see what happens.” Does that sound like a confident statement or that anything was ironed out? Less than 24 hours later Trump sends in the drones to attack the Taliban. How good was that conversation again?

How Trump Can Further Show Just What an Extraordinary Military Commander He Is

               There’s a caravan walking at about 2 to 3 miles an hour through Mexico at this moment made up of primarily impoverished families who are escaping the violence and lack of job opportunities in the Central American countries where they are from. Donald Trump is insisting at his rallies, at press conferences, and at brief encounters with reporters outside the White House, that they are a brutal invasion force. They are still over 800 miles from the southeastern border of Texas, but the general direction suggests they are heading toward California which is over 2000 miles from their present location. (They are near a strange place in Mexico that Fox’s Lou Dobbs called ‘Juar-ll-daaaaaaa.' I haven’t been able to find it on a map of Mexico either.) At the rate they are travelling, it will take them at least 2 weeks to a month to reach the U.S. if they come here at all. But to Trump, the danger is now, today, immediately, so he has told Defense Secretary James Mattis to send armed troops…5000, 5200, 10,000, no 15,000…to meet the threat. That’s more than the U.S. has deployed in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq to fight ISIS.

If you don’t look too closely, the men in that caravan are…(maybe they’re Middle Eastern, who knows?)…of military age, strong and virile (but unarmed, except for some rocks they might be able to throw). Reporters actually travelling with the caravan describe them as mostly thin, underfed young fathers, and teenage boys who are desperately trying to avoid being forced into joining a gang. Trump along with Fox news claims the women are being cowed into marching in the front of this invasion force in order to form a human shield for those men. And even worse, the women are keeping their babies close to themselves, and the young children nestled around them to provide an extra layer of bodies for the mass of terrifying invaders behind them, and those kids are riddled with diseases like smallpox, leprosy, aids, tuberculosis, and even STDs. According to Fox news hosts, Fox news guests, and many Trump supporters, they are all being paid by billionaire George Soros or the Democratic Party. How do they know? They say it is just so obvious and hinting that members of our own congress must also be going down there and urging them on, encouraging them to sweep into the U.S., and make sure to vote for Democrats…so they can rip health care away from law-abiding white Christian Americans, take over our cities, take away all our jobs…and kneel when the National Anthem is played!

These are the dangerous invaders Trump is warning about

From the Oval Office Trump admitted that “nobody knows for sure” whether there are gang members, ISIS soldiers, or Middle Eastern terrorists in among the caravan, but it’s possible…anything is possible. Why he doesn’t say that their pockets are all stuffed with millions in gold coins and they are coming to give it to Americans, free…is unknowable. But isn’t’ that also possible if anything is possible? He says he “tries to tell the truth” but the qualifier is he “tries”, not “does.”

If Trump really thinks this is truly a dangerous invasion force, why doesn’t he use the same tactic that has worked so well for him in the past? The tactic that makes disreputable news anchors wax poetically about how beautiful their launch is, how their use makes him appear more presidential to certain members of Congress, how Ivanka thinks it makes him…I mean, how Melania thinks it makes him more manly and desirable, how the use of them showcases what a strong, powerful, forward-thinking leader he is, all from the safety and comfort of one of his golf resorts?

Launch Tomahawk cruise missiles at them.

Trump insisted that Syria, a country far, far away and no threat to us, deserved to have cruise missiles launched at them…twice. If they were a threat, how much more is a threat just 2000 miles away and getting closer to our border? Since Trump is using the language of war, why not use our weapons of war? Just don’t distract him with a beautiful piece of chocolate cake or he’ll forget at which country he was supposed to launch them. We don’t need to wake up and find we’re now at war with Uruguay because Trump can’t tell the difference between that country and Mexico.

Not just cruise missiles either. Trump has no problem having our military and CIA launching missiles from drones over countries we are not at war with. If U.S. Predators and Reapers can send Hellfire missiles into wedding parties in Pakistan and schools in Yemen, then he can ignore Mexican sovereignty and launch missiles at the migrant caravan, too. Yemen, Pakistan, Mexico…what’s the difference?

But he mustn’t stop there. The world needs to see how tough Trump is. So send U.S. carrier groups into the Gulf of Mexico and down the Mexican Pacific coast to launch air attacks on the caravan. Maybe Trump can even ask for help from the Saudi Arabian Air Force which has lots of experience blowing up kids on buses and in schools in Yemen using U.S. weapons and hardware Trump sold to them. They’ll be able to show our pilots how and where to lay down ordinance to cause maximum damage. U.S. submarines can be included to add their missiles and firepower to the defense of the nation from this dangerous hoard of…poor people trying to escape the same war-like setting in their own countries.

Our F-117s, F-35s, A-10s, B-1s and B-2s can gain valuable experience dropping bombs on them or flying in low and slow and machine gunning them as they are strung out along Mexican roads. Sure, there will be some collateral damage and unintended casualties of Mexicans who happen to be too near a drop zone or target area, but innocent dead Mexicans is the price we have to pay to be free. Last year, Trump claimed he authorized our military in Afghanistan to drop a 21,000-pound non-nuclear bomb called a MOAB onto a suspected terrorist site. It was never confirmed that it was, but that’s immaterial. Plus, two innocent Afghani civilians were killed by it. However, dead Afghanis mean about as much to Trump as dead Mexicans. He can do the same to these violent migrant people. With a blast radius of over a mile, a MOAB will kill a good one-quarter of the first wave and make the rest of them think long and hard about wanting to come to the U.S. for anything.

                   Monkey see...monkey do!

It is certain Trump’s base will love this idea. Nothing makes them happier than to think Trump is killing thousands if not hundreds of thousands of non-white, non-English speaking people. They get giddy with the thought that, even with the massive tax cut that added $1.5 trillion dollars to the national debt - and there’s now GOP talk about gutting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid to make up for some of that debt - that there’s still plenty of money laying around to throw at a military solution to the immigration issue…specifically these immigrants. What difference does a few billion dollars added to that deficit make if Trump can get a couple thousand dead immigrants out of it?

And as a last resort, if any of them do happen to reach the Rio Grande or the New Mexico, Arizona, or California border, and if they can be goaded into throwing a rock, Trump has ordered the 15,000 deployed soldiers there to consider that a weapon and then can now shoot-to-kill the migrants. Because in Trump’s way of thinking, a hand-thrown rock is as lethal as an AR-15 and deserves the return fire from one. That is what happens when you don’t serve in the military and make wild assumptions based on your feelings.

Military genius such as this can only come from someone who avoided service altogether with five draft deferments, suffered from a painful bone spur (or spurs…who knows for sure) in his foot, has never spent a day in the military, but overcame all that, and, using his vast military school background, has deployed the world’s mightiest military force to kill unarmed immigrants walking toward our southern border. We see this in every great military leader down through history. Leaders like…………..well, they must be there because how else would we know how great a military genius Trump is?

Remember, on June 16, 2016, Trump told Bill O’Reilly on Fox News that “No one is bigger or better at ‘the military’ than I am.”

If these migrants really are part of an invasion force, show us you are up to the task of defending the nation by the application of your Constitutional and presidential powers to stop them. Here is your chance to prove you understand it, Trump.

Afghan Hero - Lt. Sayed Basam Pacha

This is what a hero looks like.

Afghanistan’s image has suffered considerably over the years, but especially since the Soviet Union invaded in 1979 and then when the U.S. followed suit in 2001. Since the Soviet occupation, news reports have consistently pictured a country in chaos, where life was cheap and religious extremism made it barely inhabitable. But it still produces heroes.

The latest is police Lieutenant Sayed Basam Pacha. And he will be sorely missed, not just by his family, but by the entire nation of Afghanistan. On Thursday, November 16^th Lieutenant Sayed Pacha along with the 2^nd Company of Police District 4, the unit he commanded, was guarding the security gate to the hotel in the Khairkhana area of Kabul where regional and national dignitaries were meeting. A man walked up wearing a heavy coat and Pacha apparently suspected he was a suicide bomber. When the Lieutenant called on him to stop, the man began running and without hesitation, Pacha took several quick steps, threw his arms around the man in a bear hug…and was killed along with his 7 police companions and 6 nearby civilians when the man detonated the suicide vest under his coat. 18 others were wounded.

No one will ever know what Pacha’s last thoughts were, but he knew his duty was to protect and serve. He did this without flinching in the face of certain death. The powerful blast destroyed nearby vehicles and blew out windows in buildings hundreds of yards away. But by all accounts, the death toll would have been much higher without Pacha’s body blunting the effect of the bomb blast.

Pacha’s father, Police Commander Gen. Sayed Nizam Agha, when reached by phone said: “My son sacrificed himself to save other people.” He wept as he recounted his son’s story. “He had two bachelor degrees, one in political science and another one at the police academy,” the father proudly said. “He studied five years in Turkey. He came back from Turkey a year and a half ago. He was 25 years old and was single.”

The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack but they did not count on the bravery and devotion to duty of Lt. Sayed that blunted what would have been a much more devasting blast with numerous additional victims. 

        There will never be enough men and women in this world like Lieutenant Sayed Basam Pacha. His bravery and valor are in too short supply. He is a true hero and should be honored and remembered down through the halls of time. Afghanistan is fortunate to have called him a son.

Trumpus Maximus - The Greatest Military Genius of all time

All hail our great military leader Donald Trump. The man who said no one is better at “the military” than he is. The man who said he knew more about ISIS than the generals and he even had a plan right then and there on how to destroy them. The man who, because of attending a military school, said "I always felt like I was in the military." Feeling like it and actually being it are two very different things, except in Trump's mind. He is also the man who, as late as October 2016, demeaned our military as weak, crumbling, and failing. The man who, when he had the opportunity to serve in our military in the mid-1960s and early 1970s, couldn't because he had a bone spur in his foot. When asked in 2015 which foot, he stammered and then said “It’s in the records. You’ll look it up in the records.” Does that sound like a man who actually had a bone spur…in either foot? It was only later he changed it to spurs (plural). And there is plenty of photographic proof that the bone spur didn’t stop Trump from doing ANYTHING else - other than serving his country.

But now that he's the Commander-in-Chief, despite that painful bone spur, he has the opportunity to show us how his military prowess is second to none and makes astoundingly perceptive and strong moves that showcase our military. Suddenly U.S. armed forces are the best in the world and getting so much better under his leadership. Here are just a few examples…

He sent Navy SEAL Team 6 to Ghayil in Yemen on January 28^th and 29^th to grab Al Qaeda’s number two man hiding there. Later the Defense Department said they were also to snatch any laptop computers and cell phones they could locate. But it turned out the SEALS were sent without a proper strategy in place, the necessary support, or an extraction plan. They ended up in a fight for their lives. When the raid was launched, Trump couldn’t even be bothered to be in the situation room. Instead, he was in a White House bedroom tweeting that he would be on the Christian Broadcasting Network that night and urged people to watch. Then at precisely the time Chief Petty Officer William Ryan Owens was dying, was Trump checking out what measures could be taken or how quickly Owens could be rescued? No. The time-stamp on his tweets shows he was deleting his previous message and resending it to correct the time – that folks could see it the next night. At no time did he give a damn about the men he sent in harm’s way. The following day, Trump declared the mission a huge success that gathered important information in the fight against terrorism.

Ghayil, Yemen after Trump's poorly planned raid 

But U.S. military officials told Reuters the operation was a disaster. It was approved “without sufficient intelligence, ground support, or adequate backup preparations.” They returned with no cellphones, no computers, and no al-Qaeda operatives. It was also revealed that Central Command had initially denied any civilian casualties until Yemeni authorities began releasing grisly photos of mangled, dead children killed in the raid. Over 20 Yemeni civilians died, six Americans (not the original 3 as claimed by a military spokesman) were injured, a $75 million dollar OV-22 Osprey was destroyed, and of course, Owens was killed…all for nothing.

The late CPO William Ryan Owens - Bill Owens holds a photo of his son.

On February 26^th, the Miami Herald published an article that Bill Owens, the father of William Owens, refused to meet with Trump on Feb. 1st when his son’s body was flown back to Dover Air Force base and issued a statement from his home in Miami saying “Don’t hide behind my son’s death to prevent an investigation…I want an investigation…the government owes my son an investigation.” To date, Trump has not authorized any review or investigation into the botched mission, nor is there any investigation being conducted by anyone in the military. Of course, that’s what great military leaders always do.

A beautiful piece of chocolate cake kept Trump from concentrating on tomahawk missiles aimed at Iraq...or was it Syria?
        On April 6^th, Trump authorized the U.S. Navy to launch 59 tomahawk cruise missiles at airfields and infrastructure in Syria. Congress was not notified to approve military action, nor do we know by what legal authority the US launched the strike. Later, the White House admits that the Russians were forewarned, and they promptly warned the Syrians who cleared out of the base. Trump said the strike was in the “vital national security interests of the U.S.” but then conceded on Sunday that it was an “impulsive action” prompted by a video earlier in the week of gassed children. Post-operation reconnaissance photos show several partially destroyed buildings, four destroyed aircraft in their shelters and 16 older jets around the airfield damaged. The runways were left completely intact. Syrian jets even use them later that morning for another bombing run on rebel-held territories in northern Syria. So how effective was this attack?

On April 13^th, a MOAB (Massive ordinance air blast) is used for the first time in combat. It is a 21,600-pound air-dropped non-nuclear bomb with a blast radius of one mile. No Pentagon explanation is offered as to why this type of bomb was used, supposedly against an ISIS underground cave system in eastern Afghanistan (strangely, not Taliban or Al Qaeda positions.) Asked about it at a WH meeting Trump didn’t seem to know what it was but claimed he “authorized” it by allowing ‘his military’ to do what it needs to. The bomb had actually been authorized for use by the Obama administration. But Trump - being a military genius - took credit for its use and for U.S. military proficiency in dropping it. Without explaining how the numbers were arrived at, Defense Department officials said only ISIS fighters, first 36 and then upping it to 96, were killed, no civilians were harmed. It is later revealed that the information is wrong. At least two Afghani civilians, one a child, were also were killed in the blast. But Afghani children slain by a  U.S. bomb won't generate Trump's outrage like gassed Syrian kids do. (Update April 21, due to a US military request, Afghan government officials have retracted their earlier statement that two civilians were killed by the MOAB blast.)

Trump is ignorant about where the USS Carl Vinson is while threatening Kim Jong-Un

And then we have the icing on that beautiful piece of chocolate cake. On April 11th as tensions with North Korea rose, Trump said on Fox News that he was “sending an armada, very powerful” to the Western Pacific. It was going to be saber-rattling at Kim Jong-Un and warning him that the U.S. was prepared to launch a pre-emptive strike on North Korean nuclear and military facilities. But photographs released by the Navy showed the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson and its escort ships sailing through the Sunda Strait between Sumatra and Java on Saturday, April 15, and later they are in the Indian Ocean conducting an exercise with the Australian navy. White House officials blamed the mix-up on the Defense Department, describing a glitch-ridden sequence of events, from a premature announcement of the deployment by the military’s Pacific Command to erroneous explanations by Defense Secretary Mattis and NSA Director H. R. McMaster, both of whom fed the false narrative that an American armada was racing toward the waters off North Korea. US Navy officials state “We made no such statement.” Mattis and McMaster are supposedly some of our best military minds.

Nothing will confound our enemies and reassure our allies more than bullshitting them at every opportunity. Make no mistake, our enemies are watching...gleefully. They are taking the measure of just how this administration operates.To the world, it appears this administration is either completely incompetent or the biggest pack of liars to ever be assembled in one location. And the Liar-in-Chief is Donald Trump. We are forced to trust this bumbling, amateurish, short-attention-span braggart with the nuclear codes. Until he is removed from office, I can’t sleep well at night. Neither should you.

Update April 20^th: U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis addressed confusion over the aircraft carrier group on Wednesday, saying "The bottom line is, in our effort to always be open about what we are doing we said that we were GOING to change the Vinson's upcoming schedule. [No he didn't.] We don't generally give out ships schedules in advance but I didn't want to play a game either and say we were not changing a schedule when in fact we had.” The U.S. military's Pacific Command explained on Tuesday that the Carl Vinson strike group first had to complete a planned period of training with Australia, but it was now [April 19th]"proceeding to the Western Pacific as ordered.” This was an after-the-fact explanation; the subterfuge was just the Trump administration being 'transparent' according to Mattis.

Nothing Fails Like Prayer

I received this email Prayer Request from an unknown sender today that said (in red):

When you receive this, please stop for a moment and say a prayer for our troops around the world.

(Apparently, this person thinks mumbling words in your head for a minute or so will convince some supernatural entity that, for the moment, you are sincere about the troop’s well-being. But digging beneath the surface, what it implies is; “Fuck you, troops. I’m too busy talking to myself to do anything more constructive".)

There is nothing attached. Just send this to people in your address book. Do not let it stop with you. Of all the gifts you could give a Marine, Soldier, Sailor, Airman, & others deployed in harm's way, prayer is the very best one.

(This sanctimonious nonsense must have made the originator feel self-satisfied, safe in their own home, far away from any fighting where they don't need to be armed to the teeth to stay alive. Rather than have someone stop for a minute and think a few words about our military personnel, wouldn't those troops prefer to get the hell out of harm’s way, out of the combat zone, or at least have a fully functioning automatic weapon in their hands? If God is going to protect them, wouldn’t it be easier to eliminate the enemy, or eliminate the circumstances for the troops being deployed there? Why not ask for that if you really believe your praying is going to help?) 

Dear Lord, Hold our troops in your loving hands. Protect them as they protect us.  Bless them & their families for the selfless acts they perform for us in our time of need. In Jesus name, amen.
(So, if any of our soldiers, sailors, marines, or airmen get killed from this point on, can we sue God, Jesus, or the person who sent this email, for not honoring that plea? There’s nothing about stopping whatever it is they are there fighting, just begging for protection after our government started the war and sent them over there. And I have to wonder, is that blessing also extended to the soldiers, private contractors, or CIA who have committed crimes against the Afghani and Iraqi civilians?)

MAY GOD BLESS YOU FOR PASSING IT ON!!
(Of course, all capital letters means shouting so that God heard them say it. At least the writer is consistent...May nothing happen to you for forwarding this since you just did nothing for our troops, and now others can do nothing too.)


Believe                                                                 
(When a Muslim or a Hindu tells a Christian to 'believe' in their god, what is their reaction? Also, isn’t ‘believe’ what the people who’ve been abducted by aliens tell us we should do, just believe their story or believe in extraterrestrials?)

The irksome part of this gobbledy-gook is the people who send this junk email around actually believe they are doing God’s work. God isn't aware of this 'need' so they have to act as surrogates for this invisible, non-involved supernatural omniscient/omnipotent/omnipresent thing. This being never instructed them to pray for soldiers fighting in wars their government initiated in faraway places. Look through all the Bible verses you like…which one tells you to do anything close to what they ask in the email above? It’s simple…none. Jesus even supposedly said 'Love your neighbor', not slay your neighbor.

Here’s what ought to scare you if you believe in this God…what if he WANTS all those soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen and women where they are because he has plans to kill them all, or maybe it’s to allow the Taliban or al ’Qaida to win and show the people that Allah is the right God? 

Prayer…Jehovah already knows what you want, right?…So now he just want to hear you beg? That’s one hell of a god you believe in.

Like it or not, Syria is NOT our problem

What is it with the American government, its covert services, and military? Have we done such an admirable and praiseworthy job in Afghanistan, and left a stable, peaceful, and democratic situation behind in Iraq, that we now want to put that same expertise to work in Syria? And drag other unwilling nations into the quagmire with us? Has the summer heat finally gotten to our politicians and military leaders? I’m asking a lot of questions in this post because our politicians and military haven’t.

Why do we need to stop Assad? We don’t do jack about Kim Jong Un in North Korea. We don’t do diddley about the daily killings in Somalia, Sudan or the Democratic Republic of Congo. Look how Ahmadinejad is no longer considered a big threat. He’s still making the same noise as before, but we now just consider him a loon, even though his regime has killed hundreds of Iranians. But let Assad gas his own people, (like Saddam did to the Kurds in 1988 while we stood around with our thumbs jammed up our sphincter…Hell, we even helped him.) and suddenly, Obama grows a pair and threatens to take our military into another mess.

Haven’t U.S. politicians learned anything? Do they understand what George Santayana meant when he said “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”? This is the information age, and we’re swamped with information technology, so It’s not like the facts and statistics from past U.S. misadventures isn’t available, in an easy-to-read second grade level format (which is the right level for our Congress and administration), So how are they missing the warning signs to stay clear of Syria? Does the president think he has a great relationship with Vladimir Putin and can talk the Russians into staying on the sidelines? Didn’t John Kerry learn anything about the misapplication of the U.S. military when he served in Vietnam? Are Syria’s friends in the Middle East (and there are several) just going to lets us walk in and beat up Assad? Does our military think that we’ll only lose a few thousand of our men and women in uniform when we go up against a well-armed military with state-of-the-art Russian hardware, unlike those backwoods tribal yahoos armed with second-rate black market weapons in Afghanistan that have cost us a couple thousand casualties? Those Afghani bumpkins have been easy to subdue in the past ten years; so no doubt, the Syrians will be a pushover.

Oops, wrong target!

We’ll play it safe and initiate combat by using our Predators and other drones to selectively take out the people who are deemed the biggest threats…which has worked so well in Pakistan, Yemen and Afghanistan with no collateral damage to come back and haunt us. And when that doesn’t resolve anything, we’re going to put U.S. troops on Syrian soil…to do what? How will we tell friend from foe? And getting involved in Syria’s civil war will benefit us how? How many American lives is this effort worth? When were we given the badge, and the task, to be the world’s policemen? Team America: World Police was meant to be a crude, funny movie, not the way the U.S. really operates. And naturally, with our superpower status and vibrant economy, we’ve got plenty of money to pour down the Syrian rat hole.

Those who think we as a country need to ‘man up’ and get involved in the Syrian mess should be in the first invasion wave and put their money (and their lives) where their mouth is. Senator Bill Nelson (D-Florida), if you REALLY believe we need to go into Syria to stop Assad from killing his own people, I want to see YOU in uniform, leading the troops in the front line with your bayoneted rifle poised to kill the first Syrian who challenges you. And take John Kerry and Obama with you!