President Obama finally shows courage

I have been a critic of President Obama, so to be fair/balanced, I want to congratulate him on finally showing some courage in sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan per his appointed Gen. McCrystal's recommendation - albeit 90-plus days after he received this request. Finally, we have a president, like most in the past, who is showing the world that this great country of ours stands for strength/freedom/courage rather than what we were seeing on his world bowing/apology tour.

I find it interesting that our Democratic-controlled Congress has difficulty with the $30 billion it will cost to protect our freedom/safety with these troops being sent there, but no problem spending $1.2 trillion on government-run health care and doing it in warp speed time to avoid public awareness of the many problems associated with it. One of which is, we would start paying for this today, but it will not be activated until 2014.

Creating this kind of cost, which we all know is likely to be 10 times more than this based on all other government-run programs, during these economic times is crazy.

James Schmitz

Marion