The next time someone tells you that we must continue to wage war in Iraq or Afghanistan or in some other foreign adventure, to make certain that those who have died there did not die in vain, remember the words of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of forces in Afghanistan.
Discussing the US abandonment of a military outpost in an area known as Death Valley, where 42 American troops -- and many more Afghan soldiers -- were killed and hundreds wounded, McChrystal said:
“I care deeply about everybody who has been hurt here, but I can’t do anything about it. I can do something about people who might be hurt in the future."
Do the troops feel we should stay to defend the honor of those who died there?
“It hurts,” Specialist Robert Soto of the 26th Infantry, who spent 12 months in the valley from 2008 to 2009, and saw half of his platoon killed or wounded, told the NY Times. “It hurts on a level that — three units from the Army, we all did what we did up there. And we all lost men. We all sacrificed. I was 18 years old when I got there. I really would not have expected to go through what we went through at that age... It confuses me, why it took so long for them to realize that we weren’t making progress up there.”
That is Soto pictured, sprinting for his life from an ambush. He's not confused about why the US is pulling out. He's confused about why it didn't happen long ago.
The same question could be asked about Iraq and Afghanistan as a whole.
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This is from Obama's speech to the troops at Bagram last month:
"The United States of America does not quit once it starts on something. ... We keep at it," he told the troops. "We persevere. And together, with our partners, we will prevail. I am absolutely confident of that."
But clearly, the United States does quit, as we quit in the Korengal, as we quit in Somalia, as we quit in Lebanon, and as we quit in Vietnam. And in every one of those cases, quitting was exactly the right thing to do.
What struck me about Obama's statement is that this is a very stupid thing to say, and yet Obama is not a stupid man. Any thoughts on why he would say this?
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