Recent letters to the editor complain that the president should immediately send more troops to Afghanistan because some generals want him to do so.

One letter, "Fight to win, or get out," by Paul H. Moore, states that in World War II there were few war correspondents, implying that we won because of secrecy. In fact, there were many hundreds, probably thousands, of war correspondents. More than 100 covered the D-Day landings, many were killed doing their jobs, perhaps most notably Ernie Pyle, killed by a machine gun bullet toward the end of the war. Cameras were everywhere. That war was no secret withheld from us. Nor was Korea, nor Vietnam.

The president is commander-in-chief, not some general on the ground. There are reasons why the Constitution makes this so. One probably is that generals like wars and they always want more troops. Another may be that we do not want to live in a military dictatorship, and neither did those who signed the Constitution. Importantly, we have recent history to show that taking action without thought is not a very good idea. Note Iraq. Note, too, that "the surge" did not bring us victory in Iraq. That story is not yet told.

Recently, 136 people died in two bombings, likely the result of religious differences. If all that counted was occupation, we could have declared that "we won" in a month and left then, thus saving several thousand American lives, the suffering of thousands for grievously wounded Americans, and hundreds of billions of our dollars. If "the surge" had proven successful, we wouldn't have to have, to this day, more than 125,000 troops in Iraq. The president has promised to bring home all combat troops next year. There are two ways to do that. One is to bring them home; the other is to change their designation to "support troops." We'll see.

The sectarian violence will increase in Iraq even though "we won," and the American blood spilled and the bills to the taxpayer will have just changed to a different desert bordered by taller mountains.

We have now more than 60,000 American troops in Afghanistan. Should the president send more without thinking, just because some generals and a self-serving former vice president, Dick Cheney, want them? Nobody ever has won in Afghanistan, not in ancient times and not recently; just ask the British or the Russians.

Afghanistan is a stone-age country with massive illiteracy and an utterly corrupt government in Kabul and in the countryside, a country where whole provinces are run by warlords intent on tribal warfare and on amassing wealth in various ways, including providing the material for most of the world's supply of heroin. Afghanistan is a "constant war" place, where, if the Afghanis are not fighting invaders, they are fighting each other.

Who are the people who always seem to want more war (but of course not more taxes to pay for it, so we put that expense "off-budget"); who want more American troops everywhere, or so it seems; those who feel the need to win without anyone defining what win means or how to measure it or how to get out when we win?

We know the war record of one of the biggest loudmouths like that: We know that Halliburton multimillionaire Cheney, the warmonger, sought and received five draft deferments during the Vietnam conflict. I wonder about others — his daughter, who as far as I know has done nothing but be Cheney's daughter, Bill Kristol, most of the never-served-a-day neocons, the Fox News liars and loudmouths, those in Congress who will always vote money for war but otherwise are fiscal conservatives and their Tea Party sycophants among the public — God, Guns and Sarah Palin." (I didn't know that God, aka, the Prince of Peace if one is Christian, favored guns!)

E. Donald Kaye, Lt. Col., U.S. Army (Ret.) lives in Santa Fe.