Letter to President Obama

Yesterday was Veterans' Day and for the first time, I wrote Barack Obama a letter. Here it is...

Dear Mr. President,

I voted for you because I admired your intellect, your selflessness and because I trusted you.
I'm writing to you today because I'm concerned about what you'll decide about Afghanistan in the next days or weeks.
I believe that the United States went there after 9/11, botched up its work and distracted itself in invading Iraq for no valid reason. Today, Osama bin Laden is probably dead and perceptive people know that 9/11 happened because of the way America never took the plight of the Palestinian people seriously enough.
So the Jihad against our country will only be silenced if we take care of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This has nothing to do with Afghanistan. Its population wants us out and Karzai is a brigand. We have no business in being there.

This is what you must feel deep inside, but I realize that you must are under intense pressure from the military, your defense secretary and Mrs. Clinton to keep the war going. You've got to stand up to them and say no. You need to listen to your guts and your sense of pragmatism.
You see, Mr. President, I was born in the French Alps from a very modest, should I say poor parents. I never went to college education but came to America in 1977 with my dear wife, our two suitcases and tons of common sense. We worked hard, were very thoughtful, had a good share of luck and did very well for ourselves. Not by doing what folks on Wall Street do in stepping over others but by working assiduously, intelligently and being "street-smart."

Now, having said, let me come to the most important point of this letter. Using the same “street-smart” qualities you have, project yourself ten or twenty years down the road and try to see what would happen to Afghanistan whether we were to pull out today or carry on for five more years with 50,000 or even 100,000 more troops. The place would be the same mess, because it will take at least three generations to change the culture of that country if the nefarious influence of religion could ever be neutralized.

So, with that in mind, why prolong the torture and continue the exercise if it's indeed for naughts. Our country needs all the help it can get and the top priorities are waiting right here, at home.
Mr. President, with all due respect, be courageous, say no to the military-industrial complex and pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan now! You are to smart and too important to America to get bogged down into this fruitless conflict!