Sunday, November 29, 2009

A GOOD FRIEND SPEAKS HIS MIND

‘Lee’, a former student of mine, is a Houston police SWAT team sergeant who recently served a tour of duty with the Army in Iraq. He made the following remarks in response to an e-mail about the Ft. Hood massacre and my comment that I suspect Obama would try to blame George Bush for those shootings.

To All:

Mr. Obama’s wife gave us all a shocking glimpse of his real agenda when she stood before campaign rallies in both Milwaukee and Madison, Wisconsin and stated, “For the first time in my adult life I am proud of my country.” As shocking and disgusting as that statement was at the time, I only now fully comprehend the motivation behind it. Virtually the entire agenda of this administration is to redeem the image of America in the eyes of the world, the image that has been so tarnished and denigrated by the previous administration. The whole sorry mess is about that – the terrorist show trial that is going to be an indictment of the American system of justice and yes, once again, the Bush administration, as well as our military and intelligence communities; the denial of the terrorist component of the Ft. Hood attack; the closing of Guantanamo; the foot-dragging and hand-wringing over the request for more troops in Afghanistan (while the best of our best continue to die, bleed and be maimed daily); the whirlwind, worldwide tour of groveling apologies; and the empty promises to stand firm with our Israeli allies in their struggle for the right to exists.

I wait anxiously to see how he will respond now to Iran’s latest announcement to build 10 new enrichment facilities and the revelation that they have sent $20 million to Hamas and Hezbollah.

As a soldier and police officer for nearly 30 years, it is difficult to keep my feelings from interfering with my objectivity. I can tell you this – I have a friend who is like a brother to me who is currently deployed to Afghanistan – his third in five years. By the way, he is self-employed and does well for himself here at home and in no way ‘needs’ anything from the military. They are halfway through this deployment and have already lost 4 men. We have let Iraq go – we are doing nothing more there now than maintaining our presence. In Iraq, we transported fuel and commodities from base to base there – logging over a million miles ‘outside the wire’ – going into harm’s way every time, hamstrung by highly restrictive rules of engagement that our enemy knew better than ourselves. The same thing will happen in Afghanistan if politicians continue to wage war.

I can’t wait to hear the speech Tuesday . . . I have said for months that he will grant some watered down version of General McChrystal’s request. And now he is going to announce “our timetable for victory.” Mr. Obama wants us to befriend our Muslim enemies. What he doesn’t realize is that statements such as these are windows into American arrogance and lack of commitment – two things that cause our Muslim neighbors to hold us in such contempt and to despise us so. I am a lowly E7 in the Army, but one thing I know - you don’t win wars this way, especially an insidious insurgency such as the one we are fighting across southwest Asia.

Lee

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