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ASIA TIMES


September 24, 2010


Regarding the excellent article (Why the troops are coming home, September 24, 2010). The reality that cannot be emphasized enough is the enormous challenge facing the US economy and therefore, why America must come home. Last May, in a little-noticed exercise to develop a national security strategy for maintaining US global influence, restoring "fiscal responsibility" was the number one recommendation of a group of logistic officers at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces.

Also last May, speaking in Kansas, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates alluded to this when he said, "Eisenhower was weary of seeing his beloved republic turned into a muscle-bound garrison state - militarily strong, but economically stagnant and strategically insolvent." After a decade of Bush/Cheney policies, aided and abetted by a Republican Congress that doubled the national debt, two wars not paid for, a tax cut not paid for and a Medicare drug fix not paid for, the US is now facing not just a severe economic problem, but as most national security experts would tell us, a national security problem.

Furthermore, the insatiable appetite for profits of the captains of industry that manipulated markets and gave away American jobs only added to destroying the health of the US economy - what no terrorist could have ever dreamed of achieving. The Obama administration, much to its credit, has been trying to repair this damage. But, going forward, it cannot do this unless it implements badly needed reforms and reigns in the unsustainable expenditures of trillions of dollars to fight wars and police the world.

Fariborz S Fatemi


Former professional staff member,


House Foreign Affairs Committee,


Senate Foreign Relations Committee

McLean VA (Sep 24, '10)