Ok, I will be the first to admit that when the towers came down I was ready to kick ass. No holds barred, put me in coach! I am a patriot, I love this country and believe that despite its flaws, it is the greatest country ever formed and well worth defending. It was; go get em, smoke these roaches out and exterminate them all. I still feel that way when my country is attacked and I’m not ashamed of it. Attack the good ole USA and you are in for an ass whippin of monumental proportions.
On with the point… 20 years after the towers came down we decided to pull out of Afghanistan, please don’t overlook the 20 YEARS LATER part. The exit was messy and should have been handled better but it wasn’t, nothing I or anyone can do now but point fingers and that’s a waste of time. My point is this, why did we stay there for 20 YEARS? Have we not read any history books? Throughout the history of time, NOBODY conquers Afghanistan. Every despot, dictator and hopeless idiot has failed in their attempts to invade and conquer that country. The list of past invaders includes Alexander the Great, Genghis Kahn, the British Empire and even the Russians, twice. Every one of those all tried and eventually said “F it”, including us, and left the country just the way it was, backwards, oppressive, uneducated, and misogynistic.
So, once we blew up every tent, cave and donkey hut across that barren land, we should have left, end of story but, we didn’t. Once we sent Osama Bin Laden to be Satan’s most passionate lover, we should have pulled out but, we didn’t.
We don’t really raise an eye brow anymore when we see a young man or woman missing one, two, three or even all four limbs trying to pick up what pieces of their life that are there to pick up. The site of these brave men and woman battling every day to simply go to the bathroom or button a shirt or hug their children makes me happy, sad and angry. I am happy that they are still here with us, sad that they sacrificed so much for so little in return and angry that we might just repeat the same idiotic actions all over again and our own soil hasn’t been attacked.
Call me an isolationist if you want to, I can live with that. I guess I’m just too much of a simpleton to understand the big picture and don’t understand the “message” our inaction will send and I may not understand that “China is watching” and Taiwan is trembling. What I know, is that you will never have a pet Rattlesnake, eventually you will get bit. My current problem at this point is identifying the rattlesnakes, at home and abroad.
No sir, I am not ready to see any more carnage heaped on our youngsters because we think the Ukraine is worth giving up a few arms and legs, I mean hey, we’ll let the Tunnel to Towers organization help them right?, All we need to do is send some more money. Well that’s BS. Thank God for every charitable organization like “Tunnel to Towers” that work tirelessly to help these wounded veterans try and assimilate back into a normal life but I’d prefer that organizations like TTT, Soldiers Angels and the Wounded Warrior project not be needed at all.
I forgot to mention that when we pulled out of Afghanistan we left all our stuff behind! You know, the tanks, 180 aircraft, 42,000 Pick-up trucks , 22,000 Hummers , 950 tanks, 16,000 night vision goggles, pencil sharpeners and big chief tablets. It was reported that the total tax payer dollar value left behind was around 80 billion. I’m sure all that equipment was old, outdated and no longer useful. Couldn’t we have at least brought those pickup trucks home and maybe helped out some families that don’t have a way to get to and from work? I’m afraid that makes too much sense. I expect that leaving all that stuff behind means that the manufacturers of all those tanks, planes, hummers, night vision goggles, pencil sharpeners and big chief tablets will need to ramp up production on some brand-new stuff… at Tax payer expense, your expense. See a pattern here? Somewhere we flipped the narrative from “war is hell” to “war is profitable”.
The point is, before we start sending kids over to fight Boris and Natasha, we may need to consider that Rocky and Bullwinkle are in charge of both political parties. Who cares if we don’t muscle up and show ole Vladimir how the cow ate the cabbage on the frozen tundra of Ukraine. I don’t.
Finally, here is where I make my point and thank you for staying with me; let ole short little Vladimir Putin have the Ukraine, I don’t care. BUT, if Vladdy decides to parachute into my backyard, the first thing that will need to be done is to politely ask him to put a shirt on and then the next is to proceed to kick his ass all over the good ole USA. I’m old and I’m not a fighter but if it keeps some fine young boys and girls from losing more limbs and life, sign me up.