Friends of mine challenge me on my opinion that we must stay in Afghanistan until things become settled.

They asked me, “Why?”

I feel I must tell them, and others, why I am sure we must secure Afghanistan and why I am certain I am right.

1. Doing nothing caused this fiasco.
2.
We furnished the arms that helped the mujahideen drive the Russians out of Afghanistan in 1997. When they left, we stopped furnishing any help and left the Afghans in the rubble of the war. In the vacuum left by our exit, Osama bin Laden arrived and set up his terrorist camps. He also developed his plan for the destruction of New York’s World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11, 2001.

If the United States had aided the Afghans in their time of need, 9/11 may well have been prevented.

3. Victory for Osama and the radical Islamists will be hell.
4.
If you think the terrorists and Osama bin Laden are brazen now, just imagine how confident they will feel after having driven the United States out of Afghanistan. These Moslem fanatics and jihadists will not stay hidden in the mountains of Pakistan, but swarm through Afghanistan and set up their camps.

Their plans for the next 9/11 will be on the front burner.  Emboldened by their victory over the greatest country in the world, they will push their program of murder and mayhem everywhere. Correctly claiming they have won the territory we abandoned, they will brandish their power before the entire world.

3. Turning our back on Afghanistan will leave our friends beheaded.

Afghans who have supported us in our drive for freedom, civility and peace would be massacred. President Karzai, whose father was assassinated, probably by the Taliban, and anyone who worked with the United Nations and the United States and our allies would be hunted down, shot, hung or beheaded.

Terrorism, with free range in Afghanistan, will push its program of barbarism in every direction against the “devil” United States and it citizens.

5. Retreat is a stab in the back to our troops.

We have an obligation to our young men and women now fighting in Afghanistan.
Our armed forces believe in the cause and give their lives.

They supported the people of Afghanistan, suppressed the terrorist training camps and forced their leaders underground.

Support Afghanistan in a Different Manner.

The country is 80 percent illiterate and has almost no medical facilities or public works.
Our mission can be peaceful and look only to the military to support the rebuilding of a country that will ever be our friend.

We should view our continued support in Afghanistan as not only a battle against the Taliban and al-Qaeda but as mainly a duty to rebuild a country we have helped lay waste in a just cause.  We should do our best to restore the damage we have done and make our mission construction and not destruction.

The Afghans deserve our help. We should finish the job.

One further thought: Mr. President, indecision may show lack of resolve.

Herb Phillipson Jr. lives in Dowagiac. E-mail him at hepj@umich.edu.