Virginia Gun Owners Forum - VGOF

Just finished an interesting piece in The Weekly Standard, from which this snippet comes:

Konrad Adenauer once quipped that the definition of history is “the sum total of things that could have been avoided.” But the task of a leader, in casting his or her gaze backward, is not to derive a sense of superiority from the mistakes of his predecessors, to slough off responsibility for the problems of the present, or to imagine alternative, more pleasing realities that might have come into being. It is to try to understand why and how intelligent, well-intentioned people nonetheless got important things wrong, to discern the patterns and pathologies to which we seem predisposed as individuals and as a polity, and to distill a set of lessons that can help in navigating the present.

(Vance Serchuk, The Weekly Standard, August 10, 2015)

The whole article is here - http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/ ... 01545.html

The author makes many good points about our overall failure to deal with the aftermath of our military incursions into the Middle East, which is a direct result of our failure to think things through beforehand. Starting something with no idea how to end it isn't good policy anywhere in the world.

These are just my thoughts on Iraq and Afghanistan

Number one, we are not nation builders when the fights over we should return home and global relief as well as private sectors should be sent in to help.
Number Two, we had that country all but secured, had we left the residual 25k force behind the middle east would not be so messed up with IRAN looking like their savior.
Number Three, I wish I had Pictures of the Newly Built Joint services base, 3.5 Billion dollars 12000ft runway, hangers, hospitals, barracks, admin everything was done for the most part and we just walked away.

Key issues to note: All our equipment that has been lost thanks to the Iraqi boy scouts have chips in them emitting an ID, Location and vehicle status as long as there is a battery in the vehicle so we could effectively within hours destroy them with malicious code so they will never run again or better still Blow them all up.

Statistically speaking since this Administration has assumed office we have seen on his watch a 96% increase in US fighting forces deaths, THAT IS A MIND BLOWING NUMBER.

Just my thoughts as in Iraq I lost 7 buddies and 2 in afghanistan, so this conversation for me takes on a personal note. Peace.