I’ve chosen not to make this a political or military blog. There are enough people out there with more experience and more firsthand knowledge on both sides, that I feel like I would be talking out of the wrong orifice.

This is more a rumination, an attempt to place my current wash of thoughts into a coherent structure than a policy statement. I really feel the weight of Socrates advice to admit that I am not wise.  I won’t make many of these.

I think that going into Afghanistan was the right call. Yes, I know that this is not really a surprise, not is it even that controversial a statement. The Taliban government was still in process of taking control of the whole country, and thus had questionable legitimacy at best. Since the government decided to protect the organization claimed responsible for attacking the US on September 11, 2001, I feel we were justified in returning fire.
The war in Iraq is hurting this country. I won’t go through my initial views on the war or my background as an Army officer. Instead, let me state I think the economic burden to this country is more than we can continue to bear. It breaks my heart to say this, because I think it means we are going to do to the Iraqi people what we did to the Montagnards in Viet Nam: pull out and leave them to be massacred. We left Viet Nam because the long term cost was wearing down our Nation. Iraq is less bloody than Viet Nam, but war is far more expensive than it was even forty years ago. If we continue this way, and other nations continue to buy up our debt, we risk losing control of our own country. It seems like General Petraeus and his staff have done an outstanding job this past year in reducing the violence in Iraq. I know that the people on the ground are good soldiers.  Probably better soldiers than I ever was. They may hate being in Iraq, but they want to win the fight.

I remember meeting Viet Nam vets from the VA when I was in high school. These guys were obviously emotionally troubled by what they had seen. One guy said that he still wanted to go back and finish the job. This was 15 years after the last troops had left country. Very few people think that it was in either America’s or Viet Nam’s interest for us to prolong the conflict. But a soldier who has fought, killed, and watched his buddies die for a cause can’t help but either shut down or give his heart to the effort. I think the same is true of our guys in country right now. They want to win in Iraq. They want the Iraqi people to live free of fear, free to raise their kids, and free to rejoin the international community. I want that, too. But I think the overall conflict is much more difficult than that. We have stirred up vast swaths of resentment by being a foreign invader. We have resurrected the ghosts of the Crusades and colonization that bring forth the resistance fighters. Iraq was barely pacified under Hussein. It is going to take a lot more than a Band Aid to fix this sucking chest wound. It would be helpful if we could have truly pulled in an international effort to rebuild Iraq, but we lost that opportunity.

The recent news from Pakistan is troubling.   I think we blew it in Afghanistan by being so quick to rush to war in Iraq.  If the funding that went to the war effort instead went to building infrastructure in Afghanistan (“Thank you for helping us defeat the Soviet Union, here is your pay back.”) we would not be fighting the battles there that we are now. I think the real cost was much higher than anticipated, and I wonder now if we can truly afford it.

One thing that bothers me is that we no longer declare war. The way the constitution was written, it was up to congress to declare war. Not to grant to the President the authority to do so. Deploying troops into a firefight means we are at war. Until World War II, it was expected practice. Yes, we fought the Native Americans, and rebels in many third world countries without such a declaration during this countries history. But if we are going to remove a government from power, we need to state it in no uncertain terms. International Law expects this. I think we have removed one of the checks from the separation of powers in the National Government. Perhaps the language of the constitution should be more a long the lines of: Any deployed forces are allowed to defend themselves. To do anything more than this requires explicit approval from congress. This approval can not be granted a-priori.  But I think the constitution states this, just in the language of 1780.

To the soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan: Thank you. Especially the burnt out privates that are just looking to get home, and the fathers and mothers that just want to see their kids again. May the remainders of your tours be boring and may you come home whole.

To those that have lost limbs, eyesight, faculties, or to the survivors that have lost loved ones…I don’t have the words to say that will not trivialize your loss. These losses will be remembered and honored.