Worth Dying For?

In Vietnam there was never time for unit commanders to write those letters. So, during my first couple of months, I led a team of enlisted men who did it for them. We did our best to gather the facts before composing the letters. We made them as personal as possible as well as sympathetic. And we always added a comment about how much the person would be missed. Well, it backfired only once when a mother wrote back to call us out. She said her son was a miserable SOB and she knew that no one missed him. He had told her so in his letter. Another mother called us out for not returning with his personal effects the VC bra her son had picked up in a search and destroy mission and promised it to her. (An order went out for someone to capture a VC bra so we could send it to her.) We also wrote letters of condolence from the division chaplain and commanding general, but those were pro forma. A couple months of that was more than enough for me...

Ultimately, I could not have done it if we were the bad guys. Many people tried to tell us we were (and, sadly, some of us believed it). I never did. And I don't believe we are now. There is no good or bad in a defensive war and, believe it or not, that's what we're fighting. We didn't go to Afghanistan or the Middle East to build an empire or steal a damn thing. We went there because they harbored aggressors (and still do).

It is an interesting paradox but we have been shaking hands with the Devil and never telling them they are backstabbing us.

Saudi Arabia has been fostering and spreading the word of their Wahabi or very conservative type Islam for the longest time.

I first heard about this term in the 1980s because I had a manager at my work who was a Palestinian Christian in California whose name was Gus Wahab. I looked up his last name to see if it meant anything and I discovered the term Wahhabism. Saudi Arabia has sponsored worldwide the Madrasas or religious schools over the decades radicalizing Millions. Other, often poor, moderate Islamic governments don't have the money but they did set up for failure because, with Saudi Arabia's Imam of Whabbist Sunni Islam sowing the seeds of extremism which we don't really discuss today.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahhabism

Beheadings for adultery still happen in Saudi Arabia. Public lashings and ice cream trucks that come by to cut off your hand if you are accused of stealing our routine. Some say this is none of our business but yet their extreme Sunni mindset is almost like the Borg from Star Trek with the mentality prepare to be assimilated ( or die) and then they end up going to the culture of extreme Sharia.

It's strange that we are supporting Saudi Arabia yet they foster their extreme view of Islam. They purposely go after the Sufi sect of Islam which is more like the hippies of Islam and of course we have the extreme Shia extremism of Hezbollah against the extreme Sunni of Isis. It's all a mess and we are caught in the middle.

It is my opinion that we cannot become 1930s isolationist like Lindbergh and others wanted us to be. This war on radical Islam, brought forth by our so-called friend Saudi Arabia, we must continue the fight even if we cannot impose our democratic values that we've been trying to do on the Afghans and the Iraqis due to their tribal feuds at go back probably to the time of the Ottoman Empire or earlier.


Extreme Islam both the Saudi and the Iranian type don't like Western values and democracy. We see this problem with the millions of Muslim refugees in the European Union and any other country that took lots of Muslim refugees that the police don't go into certain neighborhoods and that the local Muslims take control and impose Sharia law that goes against the Charter of Rights and values and freedoms that the Europeans have.

I don't feel that I wasted my time going to Afghanistan and Iraq but I did think that we made lots of mistakes over the years. If it's true that President W. Bush was the one who gave the timeline for leaving Iraq in 2010, that was a big mistake. I had been blaming President Obama all year on RP but he was a wimp anyway periods at least president Trump doesn't want to announce to our enemies when we're leaving so they can just sit it out and wait for us to leave. It is in our best interest to keep the war over there instead of just retreating to our 50 states and saying all you're not going to come visit and attack us!

We need to bring the fight to the enemy and hopefully you know president Trump has told Afghanistan to get their act together and he scolded Pakistan on quit harboring terrorists in the tribal areas. Hopefully, the US president and our foreign policy can tell Saudi Arabia and Iran to back off as well. We need modern warrior king leaders like the King of Jordan who is both Islamic and Western educated to stop the extremism as well. Right now Yemen is the New Spain for the Arabs were you have two different factions fighting for control with surrogates. You have the issues right now between the fighting between Qatar and other countries in a dispute between Saudi Arabia and other countries over Iran's influence in the region. It's a compound- complex problem and this is no time to pull our forces back and just say give up

We also have the Israeli-Palestinian problem and you have the Iranians using the surrogates of Hezbollah and Hamas and you have extremist some Isis as well in there causing trouble and that is why you see Israel bombing inside Lebanon and breaking the Sound Barrier. Israel needs to be able to exist and you can't have nuclear- seeking countries like Iran threatening Israel's existence even though Israel could destroy the Iranians in less than 2 hours. The only fear I have is that North Korea and the Iraniansboth hate the United States and I'm sure they have been sharing rocket and nuclear technology. So we actually have something that's more threatening than the 'global warming' the people worry about with this hurricanes latest string of hurricanes. We've had hurricanes for centuries if not thousands of years so fossil fuels from the 1800s is not the most impending threat to mankind.

Stop all the crap and talk about cap-and-trade carbon taxes and raising fuel prices. We have an issue of belligerent countries that are threatening other countries and their religious extremism is part of this from both two factions of Islam and communism from Russia. It is complicated but I don't think we wasted our time and I'm sorry I disagreeing with some of the defeatist attitude of that West Point instructor. We should not give up we need to continue the fight. It is a long War we've been basically in World War IV for decades. World War 3 was the cold war, World War 4 is the fight against radical Islam and maybe fighting Russian expansionism with Putin and China being Belligerent is World War 4.5 in the making.

SSG Diane R. PO1 William "Chip" Nagel LTC Stephen C. LTC Stephen F. COL Mikel J. Burroughs MAJ David Potter MAJ (Join to see) LTC Ivan Raiklin, Esq. CPT Jack Durish 1LT Sandy Annala Capt Sabrena Goldman SFC Joe S. Davis Jr., MSM, DSL PFC Talal Al-Tunsi Candy Alkaabi SSgt GG-15 RET Jim Lint

Interesting article, SSG Diane R.. I've read many others quite similar. Of course, the U.S. always has a "political " agenda, as do most countries. It's most usually based on self sustainment, which is generally the goal of any country, but there can be other reasons as well.
That aside, however, the bad guys still reside, train and set out to do the U.S. harm from those very areas. It's no longer a matter of leaving the "bad" guys alone, so they'll leave us alone. They've already shown that they're not content to remain within the confines of their own community, but are intent on bringing their war to our door.
Nowhere in the author's lengthy article does he offer a solution. The U.S. must do something, and doing the right thing is not always easy to do or even determine. Doing nothing will prove disastrous. The author should write a follow up article providing his solutions.

As an unsolicited aside, I'll tell you I dislike the newly coined word "fixated". My English teachers are turning over in their graves at such words. There's a fix and a fixation. However, one is "fixed" on something, not fixated. The same applies to the relatively new words orientate and administrate. These words not long ago did not exist. One would orient themselves or administer to others, not orientate and administrate. Hearing such words, to me, are like the proverbial fingernails across the blackboard. LTC (Join to see)