Brian Jones: “A couple weeks ago, I had the privilege and the honor to visit our wounded at Walter Reed-Bethesda. It so happened that…”

“A couple weeks ago, I had the privilege and the honor to visit our wounded at Walter Reed-Bethesda. It so happened that five marines from Camp Lejeune Marine Corps Base in my district were there. Four of the five had lost both legs--double amputees. And the one kid that had his leg blown off by an IED, I went into his room, as I did the other four, but this one had a question for me. His mom was sitting in the room. And he said, Congressman, why are we still in Afghanistan? And I told the young lance corporal, I don't know, I cannot answer it. I don't understand why we are not pushing the President to bring our troops home before 2014. And that leads me to a quote by Ronald Reagan from his book entitled, ``An American Life: The Autobiography,'' based on Reagan's life. And it dealt with Lebanon, and he was the President at the time. ``Perhaps we didn't appreciate fully enough the depth of the hatred and the complexity of the problems that made the Middle East such a jungle. Perhaps the idea of a suicide car bomber committing mass murder to gain instant entry to paradise was so foreign to our values and consciousness that it did not create in us the concern for the marines' safety that it should have. ``In the weeks immediately after the bombing, I believed the last thing that we should do was turn tail and leave. Yet the irrationality of Middle East politics forced us to rethink our policy there.…”