Enough is enough

In the 10 years since the 9/11 attacks on the U.S., we have lost 6,000 brave soldiers’ lives, seen countless wounded and spent a trillion dollars on wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The immediate response to the attack on the U.S. homeland was fully justified, as we have a right to go after those terrorists who would attack us.

Unfortunately, the U.S. has also engaged in extended conflicts in parts of this region where our strategic national interests were not threatened. We stayed in Afghanistan long after our initial military mission was completed and our welcome there worn out. Today the president of Afghanistan regularly rhetorically attacks the U.S. presence there, as if we, and not the Taliban, were his country’s enemy.

That’s why I believe it’s time to pull all of our troops out of Afghanistan sooner rather than later. President Obama says it’s time to bring some of them home. I say it’s time to bring all of them home. Nation-building abroad is not the responsibility of the U.S. Let the U.N. and other international organizations take the lead in that endeavor. I agree with the president that nation-building must start at home, and it is time to rebuild our own fragile economy, not everyone else’s.

That goes for our unwise involvement in other internal conflicts in the Middle East. Why is it in the national interest of the U.S. to become engaged in a civil war in Libya? We have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to topple the Gadhafi regime and instead have ignited a tribal war.

Obama has disregarded opposition from some of the top lawyers at the Pentagon and Justice Department as he continues to assert that he alone has the power to continue U.S. military involvement in Libya. It is time to stop wasting our money and forces in Libya.