Firefights are horrible. On the other side, there are real people armed with real weapons and they want to kill you. Their entire purpose in life is to end your life. It’s a shock that hits you about 2 seconds into ducking your first AK-47 round.

The reality of being a target either escapes you or it controls you. You’ll either respond by defending you and your buddies or you will curl up into a good fetal position and piss your pants.

War is a bad thing. People die… there is a lot of death and suffering. Normal people avoid it when they can.

As for Iraq… we can do like we did in the Nam and leave it for the bad guys and pretend we had no choice… or we can finish what was started.

Now, don’t misunderstand this as a pro-war rant. It is not. But what it IS… is a brief statement on how we, as a nation, learn to finish what we start. We failed in Vietnam… we failed in a lot of things. It was bad from the get go.

We owe the Iraqis better than we found it all. If we leave them in a lurch, the United States of America will never be able to live down the shame of it. We owe these people a life, a country and a future. We are in debt to them because we forcefully removed their government. Right or wrong, we are now the only real hope these people have.

The Dems won the election and probably have something of a mandate to make changes. But if with this clout they simply walk away from Iraq, we will regret it for decades… maybe centuries. You just don’t cut and run from TWO wars and leave it like it never happened.

We are in Iraq and Afghanistan. Please don’t forget the Afghans. We owe these people more than a chopper pulling out in the middle of the night.

I’m done now.

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