Adapted from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's original stories, Sherlock is a British TV show that first aired in 2010 and is set in modern times. Although the series draws much inspiration from the original stories, the plots are original, the writing incredibly clever, and to make the stories more relevant to the present day, incorporate modern technology, dialogue, and events. As such, it is perhaps inevitable that parts of the modern show do not reflect the original stories so well.
Take, for example, the character of Dr. Watson. In the series, when we are first introduced to the character, we learn that he is an injured veteran of Afghanistan who has recently returned to London. In their first meeting, Sherlock even deduces as much.
So here we have an example of where the modern day adaptation takes some liberties from the original story to incorporate modern day events. Compare this to how Dr. Watson is originally introduced by Doyle, which was first published in 1887...
as an injured veteran of Afghanistan who has recently returned to London.
Actually, that's no different at all. While most of the other aspects of Watson have changed to keep up with the times, this is one of the few that has carried over from the past. It has been over a hundred years, and the Western World is still sending our youth over to die and be injured in the Middle East, to serve nothing more than some sort of imperialistic interests.
President Obama was not wrong to withdraw our troops from Iraq. His predecessor(s) were wrong to send them over in the first place. We are doing nothing more than perpetuating a pointless and violent conflict, and the longer we stay, the longer we continue this cycle of war and bloodshed, with no end in sight.
History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme. The second anyone mentions sending our troops off to the Middle East, first and foremost we should always remind them of how many times we have tried that in the past, and how futile it is. Perhaps the violence in the Middle East would not be any better if we hadn't intervened at all; but theren't no reason we should have anything to do with it in the first place. And still, we continue.
I guess we can't blame the Republicans who criticize Obama for failing to recognize this pattern. They are basically today's incarnation of oppressive imperialists, so of course they see nothing wrong with this cycle.
But it says quite a lot that the writers of a tv show have learned to adapt this historic plot for modern times, while our representatives in office haven't even done that much.