Military families

As president, I would pursue a new strategy, and begin by providing at least two additional combat brigades to support our effort in Afghanistan. We need more troops, more helicopters, better intelligence-gathering and more nonmilitary assistance to accomplish the mission there. I would not hold our military, our resources and our foreign policy hostage to a misguided desire to maintain permanent bases in Iraq.

-Sen. Barack Obama, July 14 NY Times Op Ed piece.

That strategy will have several components. Our commanders on the ground in Afghanistan say that they need at least three additional brigades. Thanks to the success of the surge, these forces are becoming available, and our commanders in Afghanistan must get them.

-Sen. John McCain, July 15, remarks in Albuquerque

In a way, I find this type of debate sadly humorous. As military families, we already know what is going to happen. We can look at the calendar, count 12 months and know when. The National Guard and the Reserves have been alerted.

This debate reminds of the run up to the "surge."

On Dec. 9, 2006, Mark and his company arrived home from his first deployment. President Bush was still fact finding about the whether or not surge was the right policy to pursue.

On Dec. 15, 2006, Mark and his company were told that they were going back to Iraq, this time to Baghdad. The President, according to the national media, was still fact finding.

When the President announced his decision to send five additional brigades to Iraq in January 2007, Mark and his battalion were at Camp Taji just outside of Baghdad. When the Democrats in Congress passed the resolution opposing the surge, his battalion was already in the Baghdad neighborhoods.

Now we are debating whether to send two or three additional brigades to Afghanistan. But as military families, we already know what will happen.

Brigades are men and women who have parents, spouses, children, and extended families. They are not pawns in a political debate.

Show us a little respect and tell us the truth.