Thursday, August 19, 2010

Day 92 Dad

The last combat brigades are leaving Iraq ….. What exactly does that mean? Having been in the military I understand that every soldier and every marine is trained in combat skills. All are considered combat units. Any units that deploy to Iraq will be combat units, while their mission may not be combat operations they are indeed combat units, with full capabilities. While the idea of the last combat unit leaving Iraq gives a sense of safety there are still over 50 thousand troops there in what is still a somewhat hostile environment. With more units scheduled to replace units there and the possibility of a continued presence for years to come, we should not get too caught up in the sense that Iraq is now a cakewalk. My hope is that while they say the last combat unit is leaving what they don’t mean is that any units arriving will be bereft of ammunition like what happened to many units in the Bosnia peace keeping missions.

It is no secret that I have always been a supporter of a strong national defense and having served myself I am a supporter of our military. But our government has a tendency to look at combat actions and peace keeping missions through rose colored glasses. This is especially true of the Democrat majority under both Presidents Clinton and Obama. So when government looks at the military as extension of political foreign policy and not as a national defense/national security force things become very convoluted.

We are headed toward the anniversary of 9 years in Afghanistan and I am wondering what the end game is at this point. I am not talking exit strategy I am talking a defense/security strategy. Iraq for the most part could now be considered a success they may be on their way to self governing and while they probably can never be a republic in our mold they are somewhat democratic in structure. Afghanistan is not there not in the ball park not even in the galaxy of being there. I have and will continue to support our troops but question what the ultimate strategy is or should be!

This morning I did as normally do I switched to MSNBC to check out the Morning Joe, Lisa and I typically watch Fox, but routinely we check out CNN, Headline news and MSNBC to see what the left leaning side of the political news spectrum is saying. Of course this morning they mentioned President Bush and one female talking head with a slight English accent bashed Bush after another gave him some credit. She said he left the right war in Afghanistan to concentrate on the wrong place Iraq. I thought about that …. The right war? Her point was that if we had concentrated solely on Afghanistan we could have destroyed Al Queda there and now it is spread all over the middle east, Africa and Southeast Asia. What a crock of hooey! Al Queda used Afghanistan because it was convenient they have no intention of a face to face engagement with a superior military. Our efforts in Afghanistan only hastened their move to other remote havens.

They can so much more easily spread their beliefs through terror, intimidation and using our own politically correct attitudes and beliefs against us. This is a shadowy organization much like any terrorist organization who operates in the background sending others to fight for them, in the case of Afghanistan it is the Taliban. The faster we understand that this is not a fight that Al Queda is looking to make head on the faster we can put a plan in place to defeat them!

God bless you Zach, you are superman and I love you.

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