I don’t doubt that you are faced with a gruesome, troubling and difficult violence-filled reality of which I don’t have a first person view. But your willingness to follow orders is what makes that horrible reality your reality.

Forgive me for saying so, you’re there (were there?) ’cause you signed up. We filled the streets to keep you home, safe, and whole. We continue to want you here, not there, dealing with battlefield decisions and spilling blood.

If the entire ANA and American troops had been wasted it would just be more of the same, no? Remember how troops are viewed by Pentagon in Kissinger’s words? Those aren’t the feelings of anti-war folks; we think you have more to offer protecting and serving within our borders, where those that love you can fold you into their arms daily.

Come home safe, if your still abroad. We need you to protect and defend our constitution, our Bill of Rights. That’s where the real basis for war is.

Peace,
Melissa

The Greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge. –Stephen Hawking

“I’ll take it from here” Unknown

You live in your misinformed, non-austere, utopian worlds and cannot taste the fear, sweat, dirt, or blood churning the emotions and decisions of the battlefield.

You provide your chastising comments of the American Military and you yourself (most likely) have never climbed an afghan mountain, made a life or death decision, hell you probably have problems making decisions at Starbucks. I will leave you this….critics with no experience are worthless.

When another country/organized group does it, it’s terrorism.

When USA does it, we choose misleading terms like: sanctions, diplomacy, capitalism and a just war.

Hmph.

That’s how terrified they are.

The Marine Corps Special Operations Command (MarSOC) has been involved in the most highly publicized cases of massive civilian casualties in Afghanistan. It was established by the Marine Corps only in February 2006, and the first MarSOC company arrived in Afghanistan just a year later.

MarSOC was unable to recruit the more mature officers and troops needed for cross-cultural situations, and its recruits had only a few months of training before being sent to Afghanistan.

The unit’s commanding officer had been warned by one participant in the training before the unit had arrived in Afghanistan that his troops were too young and too oriented toward killing to serve in Afghanistan, according to Chris Mason, a former U.S. official in Afghanistan familiar with the unit’s history.

In March 2007, a company of MarSOC troops which had only arrived in the country the previous month were accused of firing indiscriminately at pedestrians and cars as they sped away from a suicide bomb attack, killing as many as 19 Afghan civilians. Five days later the same unit reportedly fired on traffic again”

I think politics has been involved, but I’m not quite sure how Marsoc was too oriented toward killing. The Marsoc forces of that time period were drawn from Force Recon Marines who were used primarily to collect intelligence prior to an amphibious landing. Unlike the younger Marines in a Recon Battalion, they would normally be out of range of supporting arms ( Artillery and Naval Gunfire) so the need for “fire discipline” would be paramount. It would seem unlikely that they were too oriented toward killing. Being unable to recruit the officers and enlisted people needed is also strange, as the service records of eligible Marines were drawn from the entire Marine Corps.

Also you have to note that the company involved in the shooting incident was found to have acted correctly.

U.S. launches another drone plane to patrol Canadian border http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2009/06/22/drone-great-lakes022.html

This drone plane will be “unarmed”… but how long until that changes?

The war is coming soon to your home town, because the threat of “terrorism” is everywhere, and must be stamped out.