To the editor:

Congress is about to embark on a debate about where to cut $61 billion from the budget submitted by the present administration. I have a suggestion: Let’s make it $100 billion by bringing home all the troops we have sent on an impossible task into Afghanistan. Their impossible mission is to prop up a corrupt government that has no legitimacy with the Afghan population and little or no power to govern beyond Kabul.

Does no one in this administration realize that the only enemies we have there are those we have made for ourselves, while our real enemies are sheltered in Pakistan? The CIA continues to fly its drones armed with Hellfire missiles and firing them indiscriminately at any sizable gathering, killing an occasional Taliban but many more innocents including women and children. Then, for each one maimed and killed, we create 10 more Taliban.

Do they not know that Afghanistan is the world champion at resisting occupation and re-education? The British empire failed in the 19th and early 20th century when 25 percent of the world’s population was within their empire. The Russians failed miserably with over half a million of their elite troops there and left with their tail between their legs. Now, America, with 40 or 50 thousand in a population of 27 to 30 million Muslims, will also fail miserably just as in Vietnam. What fools are we to let our government put the cream of our youth into this unwinnable war? May God forgive us, for history will not.