I was watching the movie Lone Survivor tonight. At the end they showed the pictures of the fallen soldiers lost in that battle. It showed their faces, their names, their ranks and their age. That is it showed the age they were when they died in the war we, our country sent them to fight in. It dawned on me as I looked at the faces of those young men with their ages under them, 25, 29, and so on, that they will forever be that age. I admit I am confused about this war in Afghanistan and somewhat hesitant to say so for fear of being called naive or ungrateful to these brave men and women. I know we asked for the Taliban to give up Osama Bin Laden. President Bush went on television I remember and issued some sort of ultimatum for them to turn him over and we would let them be but if they didnt they would be just as guilty by harboring the men who attacked us on September eleventh. So, they said he was their guest and they would not turn him over. This movie Lone Survivor is based on this 2,000 year old tribal custom called Pashtunwali that says they will fight to protect any guest in their village. That is what the Taliban were doing. So we went to war with the entire nation of Afghanistan. We started bombing and landing troops, and more troops as happens in all of our wars. But after a while our President stopped trying to find Osama Bin Laden. I remember him saying he didnt even care where he was. Then we moved on to a new war in a country that had nothing to do with attacking us at all and Afghanistan was put on the back pages, the old war less exciting than the new one. But our men were still dying there, still patrolling in humvees and being blow up by IEDs. So Im confused about this. Why? If we werent there to find Bin Laden then why were our men and women killing and being killed all the way over there in Afghanistan. These brave young people with their entire lives ahead of them, many with wives, all with families, they kept fighting and dying for thirteen years. They are still over there. It took another President, President Obama to find and kill Osama Ben Laden but he wasnt even in Afghanistan. He was in a villa in Pakistan who is supposed to be our ally. His villa was right next door to their version of West Point military academy where its hard to believe they didnt know he was living. And the Pakistanis were pissed off that we actually killed the guy. So I think of all these young soldiers, airmen, marines, naval operators who laid down the last full measure of their lives there for our country and I am still wondering why? Because the Taliban helped Al Qaeda? That was their custom not to turn over a guest. Because it was a safe haven for terrorist to plot against us? The 11 people who flew the planes were mostly Saudis who planned the attack in Germany. So I think about those very very young looking faces of the men who died in this one battle, this one operation in Afghanistan and I know they were serving bravely doing what they were ordered to do but I wonder why we didnt do more to question our leaders about why. Maybe we were all afraid of being called unpatriotic or naive. I dont know. I find myself wishing that President Bush, Vice President Cheney and their group would spend every night looking into the faces of the thousands of our men and women who sacrificed their lives on their orders, see their families they left behind and spend the rest of their days trying to make amends to them. youtu.be/JRY_BOYeySc
Posted on: Fri, 24 Oct 2014 06:21:39 +0000