ELEVEN more soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan killed last week.

This killing has got to stop. Too many loved ones dying over there.
These are our families, neighbors, students and Americans in harms way.
Bring them home!
I pray for the safety and well being of all our men and women in a country so far away from home.

ELEVEN MORE PEOPLE....ELEVEN MORE. It is every single week that I come on here and remind us that our people are dying and giving up their lives...for what?

I FEEL FOR THOSE WHO HAVE LOVED ONES OVER THERE AND ITS SAD THEY HAVE TO DIE LIKE THAT. MY SON WAS IN THE NAVY AT ONE TIME AND I'M GLAD HES SAFE AT HOME NOW. WISH WE COULD BRING THEM ALL HOME.

Takes people willing to go "in harms way" to give us the freedoms, we have. My son has been doing it for 16yrs.

I COULDN"T BE PROUDER.

HE is PROUD of his CHOSEN profession, ALSO.

My son better not do it 16 years! I will kill him myself. lol

He almost scared the hell out of me the other day because he wants his staff sergeant stripes (he would have to stay in a few more months), but he knows they may keep him again in stop loss again.
He needs to come home and be daddy to his newborn instead. And his two year old who hasn't had a daddy much of his life. Not to mention his wife who anxiously awaits his homecoming.

Well, I am proud of your son even if you are not. I am grateful for what he is doing to keep this country safe.

A brave man dies only once; a coward dies a thousand deaths.

David has 2 son's & 1 daughter, been to Saudi twice & serves in a position that takes him away, for 90 days at a time.
He has enjoyed his time served & wouldn't have it different.

Sorry you feel different about what your son CHOSES to do.

I think we need to support our kids, in whatever legal occupation they chose.

Simply, war (as always) is the health of the State (rarely the people).
Glen Greewald elaborates on your sentiment well today in Salon Magazine:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/09/03/afghanistan/index.html
THURSDAY SEPT. 3, 2009 08:04 EDT
The looming political war over Afghanistan
(updated below)
There was a time, not all that long ago, when the U.S. pretended that it viewed war only as a "last resort," something to be used only when absolutely necessary to defend the country against imminent threats. In reality, at least since the creation of the National Security State in the wake of World War II, war for the U.S. has been everything but a "last resort." Constant war has been the normal state of affairs. In the 64 years since the end of WWII, we have started and fought far more wars and invaded and bombed more countries than any other nation in the world -- not even counting the numerous wars fought by our clients and proxies. Those are just facts. History will have no choice but to view the U.S. -- particularly in its late imperial stages -- as a war-fighting state.
But at least we paid lip service to (even while often violating) the notion that wars should be waged only when absolutely imperative to defending the nation against imminent threats. We largely don't even bother to do that any more. Consider today's defense of the war in Afghanistan from the war-loving Washington Post Editorial Page. Here's their argument for why we should continue to wage war there:
Yet if Mr. Obama provides adequate military and civilian resources, there's a reasonable chance the counterinsurgency approach will yield something better than stalemate, as it did in Iraq.
Does that sound like a stirring appeal to urgent national security interests? Why should we continue to kill both Afghan civilians and our own troops and pour billions of dollars into that country indefinitely? Because "there's a reasonable chance the counterinsurgency approach will yield something better than stalemate." One can almost hear the yawning as the Post Editors call for more war. We don't need to pretend any more that war, bombing and occupation of other countries is indispensable to protecting ourselves; as long as "there's a reasonable chance it will yield something better than stalemate," it should continue into its tenth, eleventh, twelfth year and beyond.
Of course, the reason the Post editors and their war-loving comrades can so blithely advocate more war is because it doesn't affect them in any way. They're not the ones whose homes are being air-bombed and whose limbs are being blown off. That's nothing new; here's George Orwell in Homage to Catalonia, describing (without knowing) Fred Hiatt in 1938:
The people who write that kind of stuff never fight; possibly they believe that to write it is a substitute for fighting. It is the same in all wars; the soldiers do the fighting, the journalists do the shouting, and no true patriot ever gets near a front-line trench, except on the briefest of propaganda-tours.
Sometimes it is a comfort to me to think that the aeroplane is altering the conditions of war. Perhaps when the next great war comes we may see that sight unprecedented in all history, a jingo with a bullet-hole in him.
This point was made equally well by Chuck Hagel today, in a Post Op-Ed, comparing his actual first-hand experiences in Vietnam to the ongoing waste in Afghanistan:
Too often in Washington we tend to see foreign policy as an abstraction, with little understanding of what we are committing our country to: the complications and consequences of endeavors. It is easy to get into war, not so easy to get out. Vietnam lasted more than 10 years; soon, we will slip into our ninth year in Afghanistan. . . .
The U.S. response, engaging in two wars, was a 20th-century reaction to 21st-century realities. These wars have cost more than 5,100 American lives; more than 35,000 have been wounded; a trillion dollars has been spent, with billions more departing our Treasury each month. We forgot all the lessons of Vietnam and the preceding history.
No country today has the power to impose its will and values on other nations. . . . Bogging down large armies in historically complex, dangerous areas ends in disaster.
That -- the luxury of viewing war "as an abstraction" -- is a perfect explanation for today's pro-war Post Editorial and for the more generalized willingness to continuously start and continue more and more wars, even in the absence of anything remotely approaching a "last resort" rationale. The question of whether the initial decision to invade Afghanistan was justifiable is completely distinct from whether it should have been made and, even more so, whether the occupation and war should continue.
There seems little doubt that a major political conflict over Afghanistan in imminent and inevitable. A newly released CNN poll yesterday revealed that opposition to the war is at "an all-time high" -- with 57 percent opposing the war and only 42 percent supporting it. Even more notably, 75% of Democrats and 57% of independents oppose the war. As Spencer Ackerman noted yesterday, support for Obama's war comes largely from the party of Rush Limbaugh and birtherism, "the people who want most to destroy Obama's presidency." The New York Times reported last week that "a restive antiwar movement . . . is preparing a nationwide campaign this fall to challenge the administration’s policies on Afghanistan." Politico similarly reported last week that the White House fears growing liberal opposition to the war. And in the wake of George Will's Op-Ed yesterday calling for withdrawal, the Post Editorial noted the coalition clearly forming against the war:
The Democratic left and some conservatives have begun to argue that the Afghan war is unwinnable and that U.S. interests can be secured by a much smaller military campaign directed at preventing al-Qaeda from regaining a foothold in the country. Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) has proposed a timetable for withdrawal -- the same demand the left rallied around when the war in Iraq was going badly.
Note -- as usual -- that what is, in fact, the view of a very large majority is dismissed as nothing more than a belief on the part of "the Democratic left" and a few conservatives. But no semantic games can mask the fact that support for the war in Afghanistan is quickly turning into a small-minority view -- one sustained overwhelmingly by the very Republican Party whose foreign policy drove the country into the ground over the last decade.
But as became clear with Iraq, the "mere" fact that a large majority of Americans oppose a war has little effect -- none, actually -- on whether the war will continue. Like so much of what happens in Washington, the National Security State and machinery of Endless War doesn't need citizen support. It continues and strengthens itself without it. That's because the most powerful factions in Washington -- the permanent military and intelligence class, both public and private -- would not permit an end to, or even a serious reduction of, America's militarized character. It's what they feed on. It's the source of their wealth and power.
Remember all the talk during the presidential campaign about how, when it came to national security, John McCain was such a dangerous maniac, a war-monger, an extremist hawk? This was the exchange McCain had with George Stephanopolous last month:
STEPHANOPOULOS: Would we be fighting these two wars any differently if you were president now?
MCCAIN: Not now.
That, of course, is the trend that has been repeating itself over and over: while Obama has certainly deviated from what the GOP would do in the realm of domestic policy, he has embraced the core prevailing principles of Bush/Cheney in the areas of war fighting, civil liberties, "counter-terrorism," and secrecy/transparency -- i.e., in the full-throated continuation of the National Security State (Politico's Josh Gerstein -- who, despite where he works, is a very good reporter -- writes about the latest such episode here).
All of these issues can't be separated from one another. A country that turns itself into a war-fighting state, a militarized empire, is choosing what kind of country it wants to be. And as long as that continues, everything else -- wild expansions of executive power, the explicit rejection of the rule of law for elites, a continuous erosion of civil liberties, ever-expanding secrecy justifications, supreme empowerment of a permanent national security class whose power transcends elections -- are all necessary and inevitable by-products. As Thomas Jefferson observed in an 1810 letter to Ceasar Rodney: "In times of peace the people look most to their representatives; but in war, to the executive solely." Jefferson was assuming "war" was a temporary state of affairs; where, as with us now, it's the permanent reality, the effect is far greater. As long as a President is waging wars and trying to control the world through military force, he desperately needs the CIA, the military, the entire National Security State apparatus, and thus cannot "change" policies of secrecy, civil liberties, privacy and the like -- even if he wanted to.
That's why being in a state of endless war doesn't merely raise discrete questions of this policy or that; it changes the character of the nation. Whether to continue our massive National Security State and general imperial behavior (unsustainable in any event) is at least as important a question in the debate over Afghanistan as specific questions raised by the war itself.

UPDATE: See also: James Madison, Political Observations, 1795:
Of all the enemies of true liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.... No nation can preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
We have "continual warfare"; Madison couldn't have been clearer about the inevitable outcome of that.

we know what we're getting ourselves into when we VOLINTEER for the army.. we know about the danger, and we know what can happen..

I do agree that the killing has got to stop, but war is a part of our every day life's. People got to do what they have to do.

HANG ON A DAMN MINUTE!!!! YOU!! YOU!! HAVE NO DAMN place telling me... or even thinking I am NOT A PROUD MOTHER!!! I AM!! I have supported my son in his life..his choices...his honor and his ability to do whatever he damn well chooses to do.

Do NOT even think you know what I feel!

I have been to every single one of his military whatcha'ma-callits. I drove all the way to Georgia to his graduation. I go to all his military events at his home units. I go with him to all his flights out..AND in. talk to him all the time.

I send him boxes every other week. I SUPPORT HIM!!!! How dare any of you to attack me and say I am not proud of him!

My son would be the first to tell you...you have no idea what you say. I have papers and a framed certificate to prove what he thinks of my motherly support signed by the military "George W Casey chief of staff, Pete Green secretary of the Army".

How many of you have been supportive and sent gift packages to others not of your kin?? To men and women who need to know that you know they are there and miss home? How many of you sleighers of words have written to soldiers in supoport of them? I HAVE!!! YES...I HAVE! How many of you email on an ongoing basis to those you do not know in the military?

He has done his 8 years...he is ready to come home. He wants his life back...he wants to be with his kids, his wife. He wants to be a family man again.

He is not even remotely close to being a coward....

Why does war have to be a part of our everyday lives? Huh? Why?

NOW back to the topic at hand...it was about the soldiers dead and dying for this damn war that was started by a lie...now Afghanistan....we will see where that goes.

BRING THEM HOME SOON...........ALIVE...NO more DYING.

By the way; a mother knows how I feel. My heart hurts and forgets to beat every single time there is an attack or bombing in Iraq. I have to wait days to know if he is okay. They shut down all internet activity for three or four days when a soldier dies, and phone calls.
I hurt every time I hear that a soldier has died. Another mothers son or daughter. I can't imagine the pain and loss.
The fear and heartache that comes with it all. The not knowing...the absolute panic knowing that a bomb was just detonated 7 miles from him. That dead men are found outside the FOB where he is stationed.
He lives with the fear of losing a friend or comrade patrolling.
He holds his breath as well in a manner of speaking.
As a mom I am very proud of my son. But as a mom; I live in absolute fear for him while he is there. And all the others. I constantly ask how "by name" the others in his unit are doing. I leave them messages...letting them know I care.

I am sorry I blew up...but I got mad.

god bless our women and men who are so far away from home i pray daily for them all to come home safe to thire family and friends and i will not stop praying for them

may the angels come down and keep each and everyone of us safe from harm no matter where we are

I'm confused

is this a thread wishing the best for our troops?

or just a rant against the war? (in which case it should be under politics and not well wishes)

NEVER, in anyway, meant anything disrespectful to you or your son.

Whatever your son's decision, I wish him only the best.

I expressed MY thoughts & MY son's accomplishments.

I thank all service people, police, fire, etc. I meet.
Have bought many a drink, meal, candy bar, tank of gas, coffee, etc; to show my thanks.

Sorry if my comments got you worked up.

MY POINT is; WE can get worked up & express those feelings, because of the job, those people do.

I support the troops actions, wherever our country send them.


Again this is just MY OPINION & thiughts

GOD Bless this country & the people who defend it.
If they have to go "in harms way"; may their actions be swift & strong.
If they give the ultimate price, may the GOD I pray to, take them under his care & let us support their loved ones, as our own.

Oldsage...you were respectful in your reply earlier. I saw nothing in it that made me upset.
It was those who called me out and said I had no respect for my son in his current job.

This is and was a thread to show respect for our current and fallen soldiers. Not a rant on a mother who doesn't want her son to stay there. I am a MOM first of all....All else takes a step behind.

So.....to our troops wherever they are...stay safe...bless you all and I pray for your safe and happy return home.

My friend Paul died a year ago in a road side bombing in Afghanistan at the young age of 21. I do not get angry or upset about his death because he died doing what he loved and fighting for what he believed in. The families who lose thier loved ones should be proud of them and celebrate thier accomplishments and the fact that they are heroes too many. I thank those who give thier lives to protect me and my family so we can live another day. May those brave souls Rest in Peace.

STOP THE WAR!!!!

PEACE!!!

I understand your pain, but bringing them home doesn't fix the people who are killing them? Remember... 9/11 happened on our soil. If we ignore the problem, it's going to grow until it gets to our soil.

911 happened because of whom? Not Iraq. I dont want to get into this in this thread.
This one is to show respect and love for those that SERVE.