Letters: Pulling out of Afghanistan

Your editorial "Afghanistan: Get out sooner" [Feb. 28] makes it sound as if we don't have special operations forces in 70 other countries and CIA and Diplomatic Security Service agents in dozens more, in our struggle against Islamist extremists. Iraq and Afghanistan amount to the high ground in this struggle, much like Germany and Japan were the high ground in World War II. Would you have us leave those places, too?

The fact is there are still many people out there who very much want to kill us. Our ability to project power and influence through places like Afghanistan help keep us safe here in the United States, just like staying in Germany helped protect us against the Soviet threat, and a presence in Japan helps us deter a Chinese threat. Our presence in those two countries allowed them to rebuild, retool, and focus on social and infrastructure priorities, while we subsidized -- and still do, in effect -- their defense.

As for the Quran burnings, I believe that we should apologize for inadvertently desecrating the Quran precisely when all Taliban and al-Qaida apologize for every single American and other innocent human being they have killed.

Montgomery J. Granger, Port Jefferson Station

Editor's note: The writer is a retired U.S. Army Reserve major.
 

I agree wholeheartedly with your editorial. Furthermore, I am sorry to say that the radical Muslims in the Asian, Middle Eastern and Pacific countries will never give up the fight to control the lives of the citizens in their countries and rule by their archaic Sharia laws. They are not anti-American; they are anti anything that is not them.

If the excuse for the recent killing in Afghanistan was the burning of the Quran, what was the excuse all the other times?

Rony Kessler, Franklin Square