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Joan King’s Dec. 15 keyboard or memory slip certainly brought out the war apologists. No matter their own rewriting of the facts, they jumped on her like ducks on a June bug.
Partisan fun and games aside, the thrust of Ms. King’s column was spot on as she suggested questioning the wisdom of escalating the Afghanistan adventure. She is on firm ground with the history of Afghanistan as unconquerable.
It is disturbing how often our young men and, now women, have been thrown into harm’s way in causes known by their leaders to be futile. This was the case with Presidents Johnson and Nixon (and likely Kennedy) regarding Vietnam. And the distortions of information that opened these current Mideastern wars are there for any to see. Our country should be better than that.
We expect the military to declare that, with enough treasure at their beck and call, they can win any war. That is their job. The proclivity to dissembling by civilian leaders conducting and going to war is well established.
No one among the public can know what President Barack Obama or his administration actually knows or believes. It is however, a patriotic public that questions.
W. Lorraine Watkins
Dawsonville