John McCain
Special to CNN
For the first time since September 11, 2001, America is having a vigorous national debate about how to succeed in Afghanistan. This debate is entirely worth having. Whenever America sends its citizens into harm's way, it must do so with eyes wide open.
Though no veteran would ever think of himself as "pro-war," I believe that the fight in Afghanistan is critical to our national security. Our goals there are achievable and success is worth the continued sacrifice.
We must succeed in Afghanistan for many reasons, but one stands above all: the world walked away from Afghanistan once, and it descended into a cauldron of violence, hatred and human rights atrocities that served as the base for the worst terrorist attack in history against our homeland.
We cannot let that happen again, and we cannot let the Taliban and its al Qaeda allies conquer Afghanistan once more. Failure of this kind would also destabilize the entire strategically vital region, including nuclear-armed Pakistan.
| earle,florida |
October 28th, 2009 11:10 am ET Please,....do me a favor Senator McCain, an retire! Leave,and go enjoy the five homes you, and your multi-millionaire wife own,..thoughout the country. The american people have no homes,no food,no insurance,no jobs,etc,etc,...no butter,but you want more bullets! Please, please retire with the rest of the conservative wealthy (I ain't no senator's son) war-mongers,and let america fight it's drug wars,crime wars,and homeless wars here in the good ole USA |
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| Mike, formerly from Syracuse, NY |
October 28th, 2009 11:32 am ET A thoughtful, well considered position from the man who should be President. Hopefully our indecisive Pretender-in-Chief can find time between golf rounds, campaigning and fundraising to actually focus on a war that's taking more American lives by the day. |
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| Toot Trainbridge |
October 28th, 2009 1:04 pm ET What's he talkin about? We don't have to win the Afghan War. |
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| Lisa in CA |
October 28th, 2009 3:14 pm ET How did our objectives in Afghan change? Is our goal still to apprehend OBL? Isn't that why we are in Afghanistan in the first place? Perhaps we would "win" more wars if we kept our original goal in place rather than continually change our objective. |
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