As a Cold War and Vietnam-era veteran I have concerns that I’m sure that every person who has served shares. Sgt. Bales is an NCO, which tells me he is no raw recruit, and I understand that this was not his first tour in a combat zone, far from it. I understand the sense of responsibility that an NCO feels for those subordinate to him and I suspect that feeling is more intense under combat conditions.
Just how many sequential tours to a combat zone should a soldier make? Even if they volunteer shouldn’t they be closely monitored and be rotated off for a decent amount of time? Wars are, or should be, fought to be won, not used to make political points. Just like Vietnam, Afghanistan is a political war, nothing more.
Our service men and women have become nothing more than pawns in a political chess match and it needs to stop.
If America is threatened, then certainly we should fight, but sacrificing our youth for political games is pure madness. Better to develop an herbicide that kills opium poppies, spray the wretched place and come home.
Sgt. Bales is most certainly a casualty of a senseless war.
G.V. Harper
Marietta
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Soldiers in WWI and WWII were fighting for a victory and mostly knew there was an end to that war if they were victorious. Since Viet Nam, any soldier who gives any thought to it, will see that their fighting may only give a partial victory or none at all. Soldiers are fighting now for the political career of whatever President is in office, which gives a completely different mind set to that soldier than in the previous two world wars.
There are terrorists and crazies in too many countries for U.S. soldiers to fight in every one of them today. We do not have the manpower nor the funds to do that. Time to reassess our strategies and defend the U.S. in a different way.
Bring our troops home form Afghanistan.
Obama, I cannot stand you, but why not fullfill your campaign promise to your base and bring our people home. Don't wait until just before the election. Do it now. By the way, I am as much of a hawk as you will ever meet, but I don't want my husband and friends sacrificed for Obama's politics.
Probably the most ill informed comment I've ever seen in the MDJ. How soon we as American's forget that Afghanistan was a lawless land that terrorists festered and grew stronger. Here we are only 11 years away from the greatest tragedy to befall our nation and people think that we are in a political war. How short sighted is that? Should we just leave and let the country fall into the Taliban and the terrorists again? If so we'll be back there fighting in another 10 years. When will people learn that our two great oceans will no longer protect us from the dangers of the world? Isolationism brought us two world wars and 9/11 we need to learn from our mistakes and not repeat them.
The killing of innocent civilians is a horrific tragedy and I agree the military needs to do a better job of recognizing when a soldier needs to be pulled away from the war zone but to say there is no noble purpose for our being over there is gravely misguided and naive.