The curse of half

"The bad news is they are back. Not just a little back, but totally back. And we are back to square one all over again..."

In 2001, we suffered the worst attack on the homeland since 1941. And we knew almost right away who the bad guys were and where they came from. We immediately sent Special Forces into Afghanistan to make friends and allies with some tribes in the Northern Alliance. Afghanistan was ripe with Taliban and Al Qaeda training camps. We needed friends, and needed them fast. As the story goes, one of the biggest fears of the Northern Alliance had was this - they would help us, we would leave, and the Taliban and Al Qaeda would return and extract revenge.

Not to worry. Our President at that time wanted to stay the course. Fix this problem, no matter the cost. However, President Bush had two obstacles: 1) the enemy on the battlefield and 2) Democrats in the House and Senate. Bush was able to hold off the Democrats until his terms were over. The war had not yet been won, but we had made gains. And those gains came at a huge cost - in lives lost, in the severely wounded, and dollars. 

In 2009, we swear in Barack Hussein Obama as our next President. A man who hated these wars. A man who could not get us out of Iraq and Afghanistan fast enough. A man without any understanding of why we were there in the first place. So he started stripping our troops out of Iraq. And Afghanistan. Now we have big problems in both countries. Instead of being "in it to win it", President Obama decided to go in by half. Or less than half. And this is what the Northern Alliance feared the most. And now it is coming true.

Today we have ISIS, ISIL (or whatever they are called), the Taliban, AND Al Qaeda. The country is crawling with bad guys. Training camps are popping up again. And what are we doing? Leaving with just a token force behind. I am reminded by what one terrorist said many years ago - "The West may have their clocks, but we have the time." Meaning - they always knew they could wait us out. Because we don't have the stomach for things like this. But they do. And the more camps we allow them to have, the more attacks Europe and the United States will suffer.

We all know war is a horrible answer to solving a problem. But when the other side has told us they only want us dead with our way of life destroyed, it takes more than a bumper sticker to end this. It takes troops on the ground. Airpower. It takes whatever it takes. God help us if Hillary gets in the White House. We need someone in the White House who will take this threat as serious as it is.