The Conservative View: Shaking Sacks

This week's Conservative View, by Adair County Commissioner Russell Turner.

The Conservative View
by Russell Turner

Shaking Sacks

There have always been hoodlums and thugs in any society that are a burden to law abiding people. Whether those thugs live on the west coast or the east or even in another country they are pretty much the same. My grandfather used to have a saying that makes more sense to me as I grow older. He would say, “If you could put all of those kind of people in a sack and shake it up and turn it upside down they would all hit the ground at the same time”. Civilized people can sit down at a table and through negotiation come to an acceptable compromise that can rarely happen when a civilized person tries to negotiate with a hoodlum.

Over the past few weeks there has been much news about the war in Afghanistan, while our military had a huge success there eight years ago the war is far from over. While I don’t claim to be a military strategist, I have some concerns about some of the ideas coming out of Washington DC. A little background, before America liberated Afghanistan the main power there was al-Qaida and the Taliban. These two groups worked hand in hand to terrorize the people of that country. They are a group that does not recognize or respect the God given right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. While some would say that only affects the people of Afghanistan, I strongly disagree. Those two groups were responsible for the killing of over 3,000 Americans on 9/11/2001. Now there are advocates who would be willing to talk to the Taliban and only fight al-Qaida.

In the old war movies about WW2 the good guys wore American and British uniforms and the bad guys wore Nazi uniforms. In a failed state such as Afghanistan, loyalties can overlap. A warlord can be a Taliban, an al-Qaida member, an opium trafficker or all of the above. How can anyone hope to negotiate with one group of thugs and not with the other, when in reality they are one in the same? There are currently over 68,000 American soldiers in Afghanistan and our military leaders are requesting an additional 40,000 troops. Deploying more troops will be expensive, but allowing a bunch of murdering thugs back in power would be much more expensive. We need to remember that the terrorists that executed the 9/11 attacks were able to do so because they had a safe place to operate from.

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