Let’s Pull Out of Iraq

President Reagan made this comment in March 1985: “Throughout the world … its agents, client states and satellites are on the defensive — on the moral defensive, the intellectual defensive, and the political and economic defensive. Freedom movements arise and assert themselves. They’re doing so on almost every continent populated by man — in the hills of Afghanistan, in Angola, in Kampuchea, in Central America … [They are] freedom fighters.”

He was referring to the fighters aligned with Osama bin Laden when
he mentioned the “hills of Afghanistan.” We all know what those
“freedom fighters” became, and what they did on September 11, 2001. And
it was from the direction of President Reagan that the US military went
and delivered weapons, money and training to those foreigners in
Afghanistan whom Reagan called “freedom fighters.”

More recently, we have delivered enormous amounts of weapons,
money and training to “freedom fighters” in Iraq and Afghanistan. I
wonder how that will turn out in a decade or two. Will any of the young
men in those countries decide that the US should have an example of the
horror and pain they dished out delivered back to them?

I think continuing the occupation of Iraq, even for another
month, is a mistake. I think sending even more US troops to
Afghanistan, is a mistake.

Susan Oehler, Asheville NC