Letter to the Editor: U.S. leaving Afghanistan is ending a long commitment, not cutting and running --- President Obama’s caution and cool-headedness are strengths. He has learned from past leaders’ mistakes and thinks before he acts . As the nation is scandalized by the failure to care properly for our veterans, the president understands that the decision to send or keep troops in war zones bears a terrible price in lives and shattered bodies and minds. -- Mr. Obama also understands that we can’t create thriving democracies just by willing it in tribal, nonindustrial societies riven by religious and ethnic divisions. Yes, Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan are unstable countries experiencing or threatened by civil war, but that is largely beyond our control. The Post seems stuck in a 1950s mind-set. The postwar occupation of Germany and Japan by the United States produced viable, stable democracies. But these were advanced, educated, centralized and ethnically and religiously homogeneous societies. -- The Post likened Mr. Obama’s decision to remove all troops from Afghanistan to “the last time the United States cut and ran from there” in the 1980s. I wouldn’t call ending a 15-year military intervention, costing hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of casualties, “cutting and running”; I’d call it the overdue end of a long-term commitment. - More, http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-us-leaving-afghanistan-is-ending-a-long-commitment-not-cutting-and-running/2014/05/30/1cdfff04-e75b-11e3-a70e-ea1863229397_story.html