Unfortunately, I don’t know how much of a happy New Year it will be for our family members in the armed forces. What with the war against terrorism going strong in Iraq and Afghanistan, who knows how many casualties are yet to come?

And now, with the recent attempted terrorist plot on the plane in Detroit, we are starting to hear about fighting the Taliban in the country of Yemen, where we have already conducted air strikes.

Now we know that the Taliban or Al Qaeda exists in many countries throughout the world. So if we go to war to fight terrorism, how many countries are we going to enter and how long will it take to defeat this potential threat all over the world? I’d like to know.

The truth of the matter is this: We need to start thinking along the lines of having a true nonintervention foreign policy in this nation. We need to bring our troops home and get them out of harm’s way.

In a time of out-of-control government spending, we can no longer even afford to fight wars around the globe and fight other country’s battles for them.

But more importantly than the financial cost is the cost of the lives of our loved ones in faraway lands.

I say bring them home to defend our own borders and to finally secure our unsecured country.

We have an unsecured border with Mexico and their drug-related violent crimes that are spilling over into our nation, in addition to our illegal immigration crisis.

Let’s fix this problem first, then maybe we can consider sacrificing our soldiers in other lands. What do you think?
Joe Panzarello
Simi Valley