Cross-posted at Courant.com

I intentionally held off commenting on the soldier who killed so many innocent men, women and children in Afghanistan until I read more facts. There is no excusing the soldier, BUT, and there is almost always a “BUT.” Four, count ‘em, FOUR tours of duty in a combat zone is absurd. It’s the armed forces way of saying “we don’t have enough soldiers to carry on these wars we like to wage, so we’re going to over-tax the few people we have until they break.” They either break in the zone, or they break when they get home, but they will break in some way.

As I recall during the Vietnam war, soldiers were sent to combat for twelve months and if they survived, they were done. Why? Because there were always fresh bodies to throw at the enemy because of the draft. Do we need another draft today? Some people think so, but the draft usually sucks up poor people and minorities who don’t have connections to powerful big shots.

Once again, I say get out of Afghanistan. We did everything we could, killed bin Laden, tried to instill democratic ideas to that failure of a government that that toad Karzai runs and drove the Taliban into hiding. We’re done. Goodbye, and, you’re welcome.