Nothing partisan about it. It is time to leave. If anything that is more a left position than a right one. The only one to blame now is the person in charge.
You'll forgive me if I lean towards trusting our military to decide.... I tend to view those who know more about this shit to make that call. Just don't use our war dead for your petty partisan crap. It's sick.
There's one little problem with that: the active military takes its orders from the Civilians in the National Command Authority, and General Officers with years of career invested in kissing the appropriate political asses are not exactly free to advocate any strategy alternative that falls outside the current "politically acceptable" limits-so they don't, not in public, anyway. Now, I never served as a staff officer, so my own ass-kissing skills are deficient, but I do know a little about fighting, since I spent a year in Vietnam dutifully following orders that originated with civilians back in Washington; orders that were, frankly speaking, often quite insane, and defied that common sense so readily available through simple observation in the field. That thought, by the way, is not original, and was shared by most other company-grade officers I knew, and more than a few field-grade officers. I hope it can be understood that I was somewhat less than wildly enthusiastic, and somewhat disillusioned, by the rather dismal results that most often ensued from operating according to said orders.
Conversations with those who have returned from duty in "The Sandbox", especially those now out of uniform and free to speak their minds, have led me to the regrettable conclusion that some things never change, and that once again, "the willing, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible, for the ungrateful". I do hope you can understand that having once been subjected to the same, I find that state of affairs just the slightest bit unacceptable, no matter which party the current C-inC happens to belong to. If you don't .....frankly my dear, I don't give a damn.
