The problem with releasing people we've abused

This link from today’s Wahington Post tells a story of a released Guantanomo Bay prisoner.  He went back home to Kuwait and then went to Iraq and blew himself up along with several Iraqis.  It is worth reading the article.

 Without going into a long and drawn out song and dance about what we did wrong, or what we did right or how can we change things I simply point out that we cannot control eveything.  Murphy’s Law comes into effect even in wartime.  "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong" is an axiom we all know by now relative to this series of wars in which we are engaged in Western Asia.  I am not advocating a new isolationism for America.  Our history shows that being involved in world affairs too little is even more dangerous than being involved too much.   But what I am advocating is a sort of "War Board" be established in much the same way that the S.E.C. or the New York Stock Exchange operates. 

 It needs to be founded on solid principles, be completely without partisan affiliation and be staffed by experts from all of America’s disciplines.  All leading figures from former soldiers to leaders in all of our industries to the arts to the universities to legal experts to scholars on regional affairs be included to map out the possibilities that are extant when we go to war.  Leaving war planning to the Pentagon is like giving a four year old a semi-automatic weapon.  They are all about waging war.  Unfortunately the really hard part of international conflict is the waging of peace that comes after the war.  The Pentagon is no good at doing this and in this day and age of brushfire wars all over the world, we need a group of Americans that can outline a plan for waging the peace after the war.  The State Department has shown over and over since the end of World War II that it is also too narrowly focused to do this properly.  It is too partisan to be taken seriously as an honest broker on this  level.

I am advocating that a citizen’s war board be set up by the President immediately to take charge over the direction that American resources are expended relative to any wars in which we engage.  If either the Republicans or the Democrats run a war, the peace is always an afterthought and that makes the whole issue of waging a brushfire war too foggy and misty to be grasped by partisan politicians.  Their agendas have nothing to do with human lives, it is all about what each party thinks is "good for America". The war board needs to be staffed by people who actually have family members on the ground, in combat, in the war zone.  Trust me, if these people are given power over who, what and where a war is waged, U.S. Forces will be in and out of the place within weeks.  At that point the war board would have power to design the peace.  They would be asking questions that determine the amount of resources to be expended, the way in which they are spent and the need and timetable for extricating ourselves from the war zone or the "peace" zone which can often be more dangerous than when the war was actually being waged.  Iraq is certainly an example of that.

It is time for the mothers and fathers of American vetarans in war zones to demand power to make decisions.  It is really that simple.  The whole Guantanamo debacle shows how little concern our own government has for waging the peace.  It doesn’t matter what political party is in charge. Either political party has an agenda that does not include the safety of American troops.  It is all about their twisted ideas of what is right or wrong.  Lets take aggressive to end that.  We need a citizens war board.