Photo courtesy of Donkey Hotey
A New York Times/CBS poll poll says 69 percent of Americans believe the United States should not be at war in Afghanistan. A Pew Research poll shows 57 percent of Americans say U.S. troops should be removed from Afghanistan as soon as possible.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta indicates he doesn’t care what Americans think. He used the same tired excuse, citing lives already lost, that delayed our exit from Iraq. Panetta was quoted in The Washington Post saying, “…our commitment must be to insure that those lives have not been lost in vain.”
How many more lives of young Americans is he willing to sacrifice for that principle? In the wake of the recent massacre by at least one U.S. soldier that left 17 Afghans dead, the threat of retaliation is real. Can we possibly hope to overcome the damage by paying the victims $50,000 each; the magical solution of the Obama administration?
Australian reporter Yalda Hakim was the first western journalist to visit the site of the crime. Her heart-wrenching story includes interviews with some of the children who survived that horrible night:
How has this administration treated previous civilian massacres? In the case of a missile strike in Yemen that left 41 civilians dead, including women and 22 children, the Obama administration won’t confirm or deny that it even happened.
But, this one could not be denied. The Obama administration has decided the best route is to leave our troops in harm’s way even though Osama bin Laden has long been dead. Instead, it will pay off the victims and hope they will forgive and forget. If your children had been massacred by a foreign occupier, how would you use $50,000?