I was a registered Republican for 41 years but haven’t voted for a Republican presidential candidate in a general election since Ronald Reagan’s first term. I usually end up voting for third-party candidates. Why? Because the Republicans have become the big spending dispensers of corporate welfare and agents of the military-industrial complex. If any of the third-party candidates I have voted for over the years had been elected, this country wouldn’t be in the condition it’s in today and we wouldn’t be running around the world telling everyone else how to live — at the point of a gun!

This time, in a fit of dual personalities, I supported Ron Paul in the Republican primary and then hunkered down and voted for Barack Obama in the general election. I gave him more money and worked harder for his election than any previous candidate. Why? Because he was by far the most intelligent candidate running and because he ran an ethical campaign.

And while the news media was gushing over the fact that he is black, they need to know that Colin Powell would have been elected had he ran eight years ago. We would live in a safer world and we wouldn’t be killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people in Iraq. We also wouldn’t be bankrupt.

I have a couple suggestions for President Obama. Get us out of Iraq and Afghanistan pronto! There’s a reason they call Afghanistan “the place where empires go to die.” Ask the Russians and British. Anyone who’s watched a B western movie knows we are heading into a box canyon to be ambushed by the natives. At best we are simply providing protection for the heroin poppy growers in Afghanistan.

We need to send a special operations team into Pakistan and drag Osama Bin Laden out dead or alive. Another 17,000 American targets in Afghanistan or leaving 50, 000 in Iraq is just plain foolish. The use of National Guard troops is illegal. They should be home protecting our borders from the narco terrorists to our south!

Richard Manuel

Grove City, Ohio