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I fully support President Biden’s decision to end the 20 year war in Afghanistan and the presence of American troops in the impoverished war-torn country. Here is why: while the withdrawal was always going to “messy” and fraught with violence as in most evacuations, from Dunkirk to Vietnam, it was like finally pulling off the bandage. It needed to be done.

It was crazy, for sure. There were 15,000 allied lives lost in trying to evacuate those soldiers off that beach in France in 1940. Yet Churchill is considered a hero for his decision. So it never was going to go smoothly.

Truthfully, we never should have been in Afghanistan in the first place. Not to the level that we were involved. The 20 year history is fraught with deception, war profiteering, corruption, needless death, especially for the Afghanis who lost approximately 71,000 civilians and 170,000 military, and destruction.

“Truth is the first casualty in war.” We need some truth telling. No celebration or politically motivated finger pointing! We need to learn our lessons from the past. War should be the absolute last resort after diplomatic efforts have been exhausted. We lost the wars in Afghanistan and Vietnam because they were wrong.

I don’t think we should be killing people in other countries who posed no threat to me or you and who never attacked us. I could go on about the fact that the citizens happen to be brown and deemed to be more expendable.

To those who worry about the military hardware and other property we left behind I say, “it’s the cost of war,” an especially long, costly, unnecessary one.

Bully for Biden for doing the right thing!

Doreen Sadler

Anacortes