Scaringi Calls for End of the War in Afghanistan

President Obama Should Not Apologize to the Afghani People He Should Apologize to the Families of the American Soldiers Killed 

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania — Marc Scaringi, candidate for the Republican nomination to the U.S. Senate from Pennsylvania, released the following statement today calling for an end of American involvement in the war in Afghanistan:

The recent inadvertent burning of Korans by U.S. military personnel has unleashed the latest deadly gust of blowback resulting in the killing of two American officers shot in the back of the head by an Afghani security officer, the killing of two U.S. soldiers at a base in Kandahar by assailants including one we hired to teach Afghani soldiers how to read and the wounding of seven other American soldiers in a grenade attack against a U.S. military compound. These cruel and vicious attacks by the people we are there to help and protect are painful reminders of the hopeless failure of President Obama and Senator Casey’s nation-building in Afghanistan.

Instead of apologizing to the Afghani president or the Afghani people, President Obama should apologize to the families of the American soldiers killed and injured in this failed nation-building endeavor and should bring our troops home now. This once righteous mission to punish and destroy al-Qaeda for its attacks upon America and the then Taliban-controlled government of Afghanistan for aiding and abetting al-Qaeda has evolved into another nation-building endeavor doomed to fail. President Obama had a chance to shut this down and bring our troops home after the U.S. had achieved its stated purpose of destroying the Taliban-regime and decimating al-Qaeda. Yet, President Obama has kept the U.S. military in Afghanistan and will keep it there for another three years under his mistaken and utopian belief that we can install modern-day, liberal, secularism upon a people who will fight and die in order to remain in the 7th Century.

The Obama/Casey Agenda, like the Bush Agenda before it, is to compel the Afghani people to modernize and secularize at the point of a gun. But the Afghani people, whom we are there to protect, have turned the gun on us. A U.S. Army study issued in May of 2011 reported 58 Western (mostly U.S.) military personnel have been killed by the Afghan security forces we are funding, supplying and training to replace us since 2007 and that the “fratricide/murders” represent a “systemic threat” that has been growing since 2009. The same report revealed there is widespread suspicion, resentment and outright hostility between U.S. forces and our “partners” in the Afghani security forces. The report concludes there is “deep-seated anger, distrust and cultural incompatibility between U.S. and Afghani security forces…that is endangering the lives of U.S…soldiers.”

Because of the recent inadvertent burning of Korans by U.S. military personnel this cultural incompatibility is more evident than ever. Afghanistan is aflame in anti-American riots, but the antipathy the Afghanis feel toward us is always smoldering and will certainly flame up again. The Afghani people do not just want vengeance against America for the Koran-burning incident; they want America to get out of Afghanistan. That is because our very presence in Afghanistan is deeply insulting to them. A Member of the Afghani Parliament, Abdul Sattar Khawasi, in response to President Obama’s apology, stood up and Parliament and joined by other Members said, “Americans are invaders, and jihad against Americans is an obligation.” Abdul Khawasi then implored Islamic leaders of Afghanistan to “urge the people … to wage war against Americans.”

Nevertheless, the Obama Administration will continue its nation-building endeavor – even though the Afghani people are killing us because we are there. President Obama naively believes that by the end of 2014 the Afghani government will, all of the sudden, be able to secure the nation and ensure the Taliban does not reassert control. Yet this dream will not come. Afghani President Hamid Karzai can barely control Kabul and is hanging on by his fingers. As soon as U.S. troops leave, Afghanistan will return to sectarian war and the Taliban will rise and control Afghanistan again. And, the Afghani security forces we have paid, armed and trained, half of whom our own troops believe are Islamic radicals, will help the Islamist insurgents reinstall the Taliban. This is just the way things are and have always been in Afghanistan.

President Obama and Senator Casey, by refusing to pull our troops out of Afghanistan right now, are exhibiting a willful ignorance of reality and a complete disregard for the lives of American soldiers and the American people who suffer from the blowback caused by our continued military presence and intervention in Afghanistan. What is it about Abdul Khawasi’s call to jihad against America do President Obama and Senator Casey not understand? More American soldiers will be killed by the Taliban while President Obama and Senator Casey await their utopia they have divined will arrive three long years from now. We ignored Osama bin Laden’s call for jihad against America for our continued military presence and intervention in the Islamic world. And, America ended up paying the price for our noble but naïve policy of being policeman to the world.

Sadly, President Obama and even more so Senator Casey, who has been an outspoken proponent for U.S. intervention in Libya and now in Syria, have failed or refused to understand the pointlessness of their attempts to remake the Islamic world in the image of America and the devastating blowback their military and political interventions cause to the American people. That is why we must replace President Obama and Senator Casey with those who understand the world as it is and not as we wish it to be. The role of the U.S. military is not to build nations around the world – and certainly not in areas of the world where hostility to U.S. intervention fans the flames of Islamic jihad. The role of the U.S. military is to defend America and the American people. Afghanistan is not America and Afghanis are not Americans. Bring the troops home now before one more, brave American soldier is lost.

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