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Originally Posted by Buffalobob
Neither the politicians of either party nor the general public has any urgency on why we are there and what we need to accomplish. Right now its just a war in a far away place if you have no one involved and that is the issue with the all volunteer army. So if there is a large scale battle fought what does it mean to the general public except we can leave sooner.
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Sir,
I hear you on the lack of urgency etc, but unlike Vietnam, the American public back home are reminded of the threat of Islamic extremism in their day to day lives even with a volunteer military and if they don't know anyone serving. TSA is now a fact of life and seems entrenched. We recently had that plot in Oregon, not to mention, The Xmas bomber over Detroit, the NY Times Square bomb plot, Jihad Jane in the Midwest, and of course Ft. Hood. in Texas. We have been very lucky most of these folks were incompetent, but the breadth of incidents has hit every region.
By my read the Robinson piece was like a lot of what passes for journalism these days, defeatist and poorly researched. For example he focuses on the corruption of the Afghan regime, from what I've read folks over there care only about their tribe, it's Afghanistan not Canada, the regimes in that part of the world are always corrupt and unstable. Other than an overall defeatist tone, was there anything he mentioned that wasn't known? The terrain is tough, Pakistan is a shaky ally, the Karzai regime is corrupt, Obama is wuss, and reducing troop levels can't help. If such liberal journalists represented the pulse of the American people, the recent midterm elections would have had different results. The American people, like most folks anywhere, just want to be led.
Despite all of his whining, if he had concluded it is a tough mission, we have good people in harms way over there, but we have no choice for our safety, IMHO the article may have had some merit.