Dan’s Statement About the President’s Afghanistan Policy

Now, after 90 days of personal reflection on the Afghanistan push, President Obama has made a decision. In the time he took ringing his hands to try to come up with a strategy to placate the left and the right, 176 of America's finest warriors has perished in Afghanistan. 176 families will feel the devastating weight of his indecisiveness.

Obama's solution, to send 30,000 new troops to Afghanistan sounds good on the surface. But it is doomed to failure by his deliberate nod to the left wing of his party in stating he will begin to bring troops home eighteen months from now. When political decisions outweigh common sense then we have a problem.

The fact is, just as the troop withdrawals begin, the political race for the Presidency. Congress and the Senate will be gearing up for their re-election campaigns. The President is hoping the good will of the American people, who are seeing troops come home, will translate into votes in 2012. Political decisions are never a good war strategy.

Things may calm down in Afghanistan by then, or not. Our enemies there are not backwards or ignorant. They are a patient enemy who make strategy based on decades and centuries, not on months as the President and his advisers are doing. The Taliban insurgents will probably fade into the no-man's land between Afghanistan and Pakistan and wait out the withdrawals. Al-Qaeda will not go away just because the President says so.

This war is Obama's now. Those heroes that have died in the last 90 days and the ones who will pay the ultimate price in the next eighteen months will rest on Obama's shoulders. We need Leaders who understand the needs and sacrifices of our troops and their families. The present Administration does not know war, up close and personal. They are intellectuals. How many of them ever bleed for their country?

Staff Sergeant Dan Gilyeat, (USMC Retired)