To the editor:

Why does our president persist in consulting the “generals in the field” when he is trying to determine how we should conduct this war in Afghanistan? It’s like asking my 3-year-old granddaughter if she wants an ice cream cone. It’s bad enough that he asks, but even worse that he takes their suggestions and we, the taxpayers, pay the trillions to stay mired in this impossible conflict.

If it was a real war, and if it was possible to win, then he should consult the generals in the field, but anyone in their right mind knows that Afghanistan is not a nation and we are not fighting an army. We are fighting a way of life that is stuck in the 17th century, and the people of that nation will need to decide to rejoin the modern world or stay where they are.

As long as conservative Muslims control any nation, including Pakistan, we will not change their culture or stop their hate. When a community allows a Taliban member to gouge the eyes out of a 6-year-old girl because she is reading a book, you know that community has no soul, and no integrity and all of the American troops and all of the American dollars are not going to change that reality.

I do believe that the thinking, intelligent people in Pakistan and Afghanistan are beginning to realize that conservative, theocratic Muslim controls must be overcome, but THEY need to fight that fight and sacrifice their own lives if they honestly want any form of democratic freedom. We can’t do it for them, and they don’t want us to do it for them.