It's easy to say, let's go in and get the bad guys. But you have a divided country of Sunnis and Shias. The United States goes and takes action there on behalf of the Iraqi government. You've got Iran coming in and saying we're going to stand with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, so now we're aligning ourselves with Iran, and if we do air strikes, becoming de facto air force for them.

I volunteered to deploy to Iraq. I was one of the few soldiers who were not on the mandatory deployment roster - close to 3,000 Hawaii soldiers were.

These days, it's often women in uniform - moms, wives, even grandmothers - who deploy and leave their families behind.

It is clear that there needs to be a closer working relationship between the United States and India. How can we have a close relationship if decision-makers in Washington know very little, if anything, about the religious beliefs, values, and practices of India's 800 million Hindus?

We cannot afford to walk down that dangerous path of government overstepping its boundaries into the most personal parts of our lives.

I'm not a political pundit, and I don't follow these things probably as closely as others, but there are polls that have shown that Senator Bernie Sanders can beat Donald Trump and, I believe, some of the other Republican candidates as well.

It makes no sense for us to consider going back there and getting involved in what truly is a religious civil war. What real difference would it make on the ground? And secondly, is it in the best interests of the United States to do that? I would say that those questions are not being answered in a compelling way that would cause me to support that.