Editor,
Why are we even discussing “boots on the ground” to fight the Islamic State when the most threatened Islamic countries, like Turkey, Iran and especially Saudi Arabia, are reluctant to fight to protect their own interest? Haven’t we learned anything from more than a decade’s experience of war in Iraq?
Has everyone forgotten the trillions of dollars of taxpayer money that has been poured into the Iraq war, not to mention the thousands our dead and maimed young men and women now languishing in veteran’s hospitals.
Why not ask George W. Bush if we should go back to Iraq? Why not ask former vice president Dick Cheney about the profits his Halliburton gobbled up from the several billion-dollar no-bid contracts in Iraq?
Was it Cheney or Rumsfeld who quietly hired Blackwater USA, the powerful private army to operate in international war zones and on American soil? This army’s lowliest foot soldier was paid about $100,000 a year. Twenty-five-thousand men of this mercenary army were unleashed in Iraq where its soldiers committed several atrocities and war crimes. These hired guns, with their black uniforms and automatic weapons, also appeared on the streets of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. They operated at home and abroad, beyond the bounds of legal constraints.
The media had exposed the mountain of lies that led us to invade Iraq. But now, why are the pundits reluctant to point out that our experience in Iraq, Afghanistan and also Vietnam should demonstrate that fanatical ideologies cannot be defeated militarily?
When will we ever learn?
Guy M. Guerrero
Burlingame
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