Video: Corporal Rick Reyes on Afghanistan and "Creating Enemies Out of Civilians"

Former Marine Corporal Rick Reyes appeared before a Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Afghanistan yesterday. In less than seven minutes, he offered an eloquent warning against the idea of a military-first solution:

We weren't fulfilling our objective of capturing terrorists, but instead creating enemies out of civilians. As a Marine trying to ensure justice, I began losing sight of why I was there and the conviction began to fade.

Because our mission was to capture suspected Taliban and had no successful way of being able to distinguish them, we had no other choice but to suspect the entire civilian population, innocent or not....Almost 100 percent of the time we would find that suspected terrorists turned out to be innocent civilians. I began to feel like we were chasing ghosts, fighting an enemy that we could not see or that didn't allow itself to be seen. How can you tell the difference between the Taliban and Afghan civilians? The answer is that you can't. It all stopped making sense....

Sending more troops won't make the US safer. It will only build more opposition against us.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypwrq4mbiQw[/youtube]