In war-torn countries

The press is for the governed, not the governors. Those of you who saw Steven Spielberg’s The Post know that comment came from a Supreme Court justice in regard to the court’s favorable ruling on the Washington Post’s printing of the Pentagon Papers, which dealt with the Vietnam War.

Despite President Richard Nixon’s best efforts to sue the Post for possible breach of national security, the Supreme Court ruled that a free press is guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

For the uninformed, the Pentagon Papers proved that despite what Americans were being told by its leaders, we were indeed losing the Vietnam War.

In all probability, the same could be said about the Afghanistan war. We have been there nearly 17 years and have almost nothing favorable to show for it. The Afghanistan people, for the most part, seemingly don’t want us there because our fight against the Taliban is something they alone need to settle since it consists of only their own people. I heard the Afghanistan president say on national television that the war will go on for generations, with or without American assistance.

Prior to election, President Donald Trump promised to get us out of any more brushfire wars, but instead he has sent an additional 3,500 troops to Afghanistan. We are also reportedly paying 90 percent of the Afghanistan’s army’s cost.

Why is it we seem to think that after 17 years in that war-torn country we can win, and how do we define such? A civil war, such as that being fought in Afghanistan, should be left up to its own people to settle. What if Afghanistan had intervened in our Civil War? It is my belief that both the North and South would have united and chased the Afghanistan army out of our country. VERNON McDANIEL Ozark