Osama Bin Laden Is Dead. Let's Start Bringing Our Troops - And our Cash -- Home.

[Donnachaidh]

http://progresszine.com/2011/05/02/osama-bin-laden-is-dead-lets-start-bringing-our-troops-and-our-cash-home/

As United States citizens, we have every right to feel overwhelmed with relief and happiness at the news that Osama bin Laden is dead. We owed that much to the families of the nearly 3,000 Americans who died on September 11th, 2001, and the news is long past due.

When we take a step back and reflect on this, however, we have a responsibility to ourselves and to the rest of the world to ramp up the pace of bringing our troops home. No one innocent person’s life is worth more than another innocent person’s life, whether that person be black or white, Muslim or Christian, United States citizen or Afghani citizen. We’ve lost far too many soldiers, and we’ve killed far too many civilians. We’ve devastated families and communities in ways we cannot even begin to understand, at home and abroad.

Over one million lives have been lost to the so-called “war on terror” over the past 10 years. Men and women, elderly and children, guilty and innocent. Enough is enough. I am thrilled that Osama bin Laden is dead, but I will not truly celebrate any military action until said military action is the last troop being brought home from the Middle East. I realize bin Laden’s death does not mean an immediate withdrawal of all United States troops, but make no mistake about it – it has to happen, and soon. We can maintain a small presence in these countries for intelligence and security purposes, without actively engaging them in military conflict.

President Obama needs to prove to friend and foe alike that our time to play world police has passed. Doing so now would not be a signal of weakness, but rather a resonating sign of power. While we can claim a belated victory in bringing justice to bin Laden, we should be mindful of the price we’ve paid for it to happen.

More at the link --