November 10, 2009

Readers' Forum: Nov. 11, 2009

How much time should it take to make a decision?

I just read the Sunday editorial titled “Escalation of Afghan war is no decision to be made in haste.” To quote: “Let Mr. Obama make an informed and careful decision.”

My husband is serving his second tour of duty in Afghanistan. He has left behind his family and the job he loves as the chief of police for the Terre Haute Police Department. Our soldiers are making sacrifices that put their lives on the line everyday!

I respect our president and realize he also has a difficult job, but ... how much time do we need to make an informed and careful decision?

Please don’t make this war in Afghanistan seem so simple.

— Julie Plasse

Terre Haute



Obama should not escalate war in Afghanistan

General McChrystal wants to fight the Taliban insurrectionists with a retread version of the utopian “hearts and minds” strategy. Only those narrowed by military arrogance linked to cultural ignorance and papered over with willful disregard for the facts on the ground would consider putting such a strategy into effect. Why should anyone assume an outside force armed to the teeth on the ground and raining indiscriminate death from the sky via drones and bombers can turn an entire country of isolated mountain villages into something akin to Switzerland?

Read Alissa J. Rubin’s “New York Times” report from Afghanistan. She catches the thinking that circulates through village markets every day and is bantered about each night around the family meal. Americans and NATO forces are seen as inept occupiers who will someday leave. Afghans who are not powerfully placed puppets and profiteers see no upside in supporting the supporters of the corrupt regime in Kabul.

So, remembering the defeat of the Soviets and other western powers in the past, the man on the dusty street, the village Afghani, scoffs at our efforts.

“What have the Americans done in eight years?” asked Abdullah Wasay, 60, a pharmacist in Charikar, a market town about 25 miles north of Kabul, expressing a view typical of many here. “Americans are saying that with their planes they can see an egg 18 kilometers away, so why can’t they see the Taliban?”

Hawkish conservatives in the United States are the first to cry out for local solutions to local problems. These blind hawks, the Sultans of the Surge to Nowhere, mindlessly argue every domestic problem can be solved on the local level. I propose they listen to this ideologically simpatico brother, Mohammed Younnis. Here is his analysis:

“They [the Taliban] are the sons of this country, it is right to negotiate with the Taliban,” said Mohammed Younnis, a shopkeeper in Charikar who sells tea, sugar and grains.

“This government is Afghan, and the Taliban are Afghan; they should build the country together,” he said.

President Obama should not escalate the war in Afghanistan. It may have been a “necessary war” when bin Laden was crouching in a cave. He is long gone. This war is now a bloody mountain quagmire.

— Gary W. Daily

Terre Haute



Task Force 41 sends prayers to Griffin family

My name is SSG Padgett and I am from Terre Haute and I am in Afghanistan and our prayers go out to the Griffin family. Would you please let them know that Task Force 41 sends our prayers and how proud we are of our brother who gave his life for our freedom. I am 47 and I have a son here too!

I am very sorry. I didn’t know how to get the word out that we want the family to know we are very proud and our prayers are with them.

— SSG Robert M. Padgett

Terre Haute

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