Landmark: 1000 U.S. Soldiers Killed in Afghanistan

The government announced-quietly -- not at a news conference or on the front page of the Times or the Post -- that the 1000th U.S. Soldier had been killed in Afghanistan. No figure for the number of Afghans killed or U.S. soldiers maimed, blinded, or left paraplegic. What number are they aiming for, eventually? And, to what purpose?

This invasion of a primitive country may have had some justification early on, when we missed capturing Bin Laden but did "defeat" the Taliban, before turning our attention, and troops, to invade Iraq for no valid reason. Now, as we are pulling back from that fiasco, the president agreed to send more troops back to Afghanistan, on a mission to support a corrupt and dysfunctional government, fight the resurrected Taliban and Al Queda, and "win the hearts and minds of the people." Unfortunately for us, Al Queda has spread far beyond Afghanistan (if it was ever centered there) and, although we keep announcing the killing of leaders of both of these organizations, new leaders seem to appear, as if by magic.

Any decent, unbiased historian of the Middle East and Asia will tell you that Afghanistan has never been captured and subdued, from Alexander the Great to the recent Russian attempt. It is sad that Barrack Obama, who was once a legal scholar and intellectual (unlike his predecesor), doesn't appear to be acting in accord with both historical and contemporary facts.