A Quote by Allen West
As a 22-year Army Veteran who served in Operations Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom, and as a Civilian Advisor to the Afghan Army in Operation Enduring Freedom, I understand both the gravity of giving the order, and the challenge of carrying it out.
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Early in my career, I served in the Army. I took care of wounded soldiers in Operation Desert Storm, and I saw what weapons of war do to human beings.
I grew up in southwest Iowa, on a farm north of Stanton, Iowa, which is a tiny little town, a farming community. I went to Iowa State University and joined Army ROTC while I was there and just have had such a phenomenal life. I am a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
The magnificent army that fought in Desert Storm is a great army, and it still is a magnificent army today. But it was one we designed for the Cold War, and the Cold War has been over for ten years now.
As a 29 year veteran of the US Army/Army Reserves, retiring as a Colonel and having served as a U.S. diplomat for 16 years and resigning in 2003 in opposition to the Iraq war, I firmly believe war does not resolve political issues. We must work diligently to force the governments of our nations to use diplomacy, not weapons.
I was fortunate to have served in leadership positions throughout my entire service in the Army. I was in my first unit for two or three months before deploying to Desert Storm. I immediate knew I was in the right place.
It's unclear how air strikes on our part can succeed unless the Iraqi army is willing to fight, and that's uncertain given the fact that several Iraqi army divisions have melted away.
The president [Barack Obama] decided to leave more troops than he had originally planned in Afghanistan. We have a very cooperative government there, with Ashraf Ghani and his top - his top partner, Abdullah. And they are doing their very best. And the Afghan army is actually fighting. The Afghan army is taking heavy losses defending Afghan territory.
The question is always how you get the number of troops needed. They do not have to be coalition forces. We also have to expand the training program for the Afghan National Army and the national police, in particular. and Defense Secretary Robert Gates has already announced support for a significant increase in the Afghan army.
The history of warfare has not yet enabled any army, any civilized army, the army of a democracy like Israel, to be able to deal with a ruthless terrorist enemy that uses civilians as a human shield without having some incidental civilian casualties.
Operation Iraqi Freedom is over, and the Iraqi people now have lead responsibility for the security of their country
At the end of the day...if your army won't fight, it's because they don't trust their incompetent, corrupt generals, they don't trust each other. This is an enduring civil war between the Shia, the Sunni, and the Kurds. So I don't think we've got any options and we'd be ill-advised to start bombing where we really can't sort out the combatants or understand where the civilian population is.
I tried to render the Afghan war as much as I could fro the perspective of the Afghans. I have served as an advisor to Afghan troops, and much of my war experience was seen through the lens of fighting that war alongside Afghan soldiers.
My dad was in the Army. The Army's not great pay, but, you know, we moved from Army patch to Army patch wherever that was. The Army also contributed to sending me off to boarding school.
Make no mistake about it: Operation Desert Storm truly was a victory of good over evil, of freedom over tyranny, of peace over war.
The only freedom that is of enduring importance is the freedom of intelligence, that is to say, freedom of observation and of judgment, exercised in behalf of purposes that are intrinsically worth while. The commonest mistake made about freedom is, I think, to identify it with freedom of movement, or, with the external or physical side of activity.
The job of training an Iraqi police force is one of the most important tasks being undertaken in Operation Iraqi Freedom. It is also one of the most difficult.
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