Veterans Brock McIntosh and Rick Reyes on Afghanistan

 

“I thought as soon as we hit the ground, we would immediately start changing things and making it better for the people, but, during the entire time I was there, we rarely did any kind of humanitarian aid missions.  They have a lot of social issues that they are dealing with, like poverty and the lack of education, the lack of communication and transportation networks, the lack of infrastructure, lots of government corruption.  Those are the issues that they are really having to deal with, those are the problems that need to be fixed.  Those aren’t the things that the military is really equipped to deal with. . . .  I don’t think what we are doing in Afghanistan is making us safer at all.  In fact, what we are doing in Afghanistan might be putting us in more danger because we are breeding resentment all over the Muslim world, including in Central Asia and in the Middle East.”– Specialist Brock McIntosh, Army National Guard, Afghanistan Veteran

“We were going to these homes, basically destroying anything that was in our way.  There were kids, there were old women.  You know, they get caught in the middle of all this.  They get dragged out of their houses.  The men are always suspected.  Any adult male was suspected to be a terrorist.  Any child or woman was looked at as an accomplice. . . .  There is no military solution in Afghanistan.  You can’t solve Afghanistan’s problems with a military.” — Cpl. Rick Reyes, US Marine Corps, Afghanistan Veteran


For more information, visit <rethinkafghanistan.com>,




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