According to the website iCasualties.org, which tracks U.S. troop deaths and injuries in Iraq and Afghanistan, the number of troops killed in connection with the Afghanistan war now exceeds 1,500.
Here are the names of the U.S. troops that have been killed since the death of Osama bin Laden:
What do we say to their families? This war's not making us safer, it's not worth the cost, and Osama bin Laden is gone. How many more troop deaths and civilian killings will we tolerate before Washington acts to end this war?
President Obama and his advisers have promised repeatedly that significant troop reductions would begin in July 2011. With that time fast approaching, it's time for the administration to declare the start of a swift withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan so this list doesn't continue to grow to no good end. We need our loved ones and our tax dollars (more than $2 billion/week!) home.
Sign Rethink Afghanistan's petition to end the war.
Follow Derrick Crowe on Twitter: www.twitter.com/derrickcrowe
Robert P. Jones, Ph.D.: Bin Laden's Death: When Bad Things Happen to Bad People
Robert Naiman: Days of Decision on Ending the Wars
I'm curious what your response to 9/11 would have been instead.
-Card-Carrying American
http://cardcarryingamerican.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Card-Carrying-American/149565408390518
SEMPER FI Doing a great job
What will it take for Americans to react? Do they think our lawmakers are going to end this war on their own, without any input from us, or do they simply not care?
Let's start counting war casualties and not just war fatalities. this is waht we used to do in our military conflicts and Bush changed this because it reduces the apparent cost that we as a nation are paying. Casualties includes those who have been seriously wounded and while some of those wounded have only lost limbs, others have been blinded, crippled or left mentally incapacitated, there futues destroyed. This matters because the total casualties are something like an order of magnitude greater in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
Another thing we should count is how many of the troops of our valiant allies have been wounded or killed, because we are not the only ones paying a price here.
And finally, but not least of all how many foreign civilians have we killed in these conflicts?
We must NOT abandon Afghans to Taliban medieval rule.
We abandoned Afghans before and we're still paying the price for it.
That blunder must NOT be repeated.
We cannot keep pouring money down the rathole that is afghanistan forever, and after nine years we basically have nothing to show for our effort, thanks mainly to Bush.
Wrong. We are achieving these goals. Building of Afghan infrastructure, and advancements in other areas of economy and social life continue,
America-firster new-sources dedicated to the creating the perception that we're losing notwithstanding.
Also, the Century Foundation, a progressive organization and no particular friend of the war, disagrees with your assessment of progress. We are finally, belatedly, getting it right.
The Century Foundation Report March 2011 page 18: "Meanwhile, despite proclamations of inevitable victory from Taliban leaders in Pakistan, some former Taliban privately seem to accept that its progress in recent years has provoked sufficient counterforce to contain it...The Islamic republic that emerged from the Bonn process has delivered some tangible economic and social improvements...It is developing a sizable army that aspires to professional standards and that, despite problematical ethnic imbalance in its officer corps, appears to enjoy the respect of much of the Afghan public...Taliban forces are sustaining punishing blows that appear to be decimating their mid-level leadership...The lock they had regained over Pashtun areas in the south and east of the country has been disrupted...by intensified U.S.-led military operations. ...The alliance between the government and the forces deployed by NATO remains a formidable obstacle to any prospect of an outright Taliban victory."
-Card-Carrying American
http://cardcarryingamerican.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Card-Carrying-American/149565408390518
Many people on HuffPo seem to have lost sight of the vital national security reasons for our involvement in Afghanistan. I can't say I blame them entirely as it has take FAR too long to achieve victory. However, that is an argument to FINISH THE JOB, not repeat the mistakes of history.
Victory is finally, belatedly, being achieved. Now we'll see if the US punts the ball away in the last 10 yards of the field.
-Card-Carrying American
http://cardcarryingamerican.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Card-Carrying-American/149565408390518
It is highly doubtful that they had U.S. interests in mind at all.
Primitive anti-Americanism is the core religion of their ilk.
That is why they run interference for global Jihadists,Shariah thumpers and anyone else who opposes U.S.
The Best way to make the mideast irrelevant would be to make our nation energy independent, but we do not have the will as a people to drastically change our lifestyle, to abandon the suburbs and relocate to cities where we could walk to work and eat locally grown food only.
Just to give a different perspective on this. I'm from the UK and the bodies of our dead land at the same airport and are driven through a town called Wootten Bassett where veterans and the townsfolk line the streets to pay their respects. It's on the tv all too often. Naturally the politicians are nowhere to be seen.
What exactly IS our mission in Afghanistan? Or to split it out, what is the US mission and what is the UK mission. Being so much smaller with fewer resources we tend to follow the lead. If the US pulls out the the UK has no choice. We have had all sorts of changing explanations over more than a decade about the bright new future for this place. But after all the cant about women's rights and security and drugs, there is a president who has authorised a law allowing rape in marriage, happily accepts suitcases of cash from Iran and the drugs problem has gone up and down but never away.
The politicians are silent about the mission because they are as much in the dark now as anybody. They cannot think of one so just make noises about providing the 'support' for the troops. So embarrassed are they by the whole thing that it is illegal to demonstrate near parliament. A lady reading (not shouting) the list of the dead was arrested.
I salute yours and ours who pay the price of the politicos muddle.
Some of the changes that happened here thanks to Bush included:
1. a ban on photographing and televising the arrival of coffins carrying dead troops
2. Our military stopped counting the number of civilian casualties we are causing.
3. We used to count war casualties, which includes the injured, and dead. Now we just count the dead, and even there we have been fudging this data. A soldier shot in Iraq but airlifted to Germany for emergency surgery who then dies is not considered to be someone who died in action.
4. Bush eliminated safeguards that prohibitted and punished war profiteering. His Vice Presdient, Dick Cheney continues to be the single largest stockholder in Halliburton, a major military contractor. Cheney was being paid by Halliburton more than eight million dollars each and every year he was VP.
I thinkthat the Politicians had a mission and the mission was to be at war, war without end amen.
We're in Afghanistan because the ruling Taliban hosted/supported/protected al Qaeda who used that freedom and base to plan and launch attacks against us. So we removed the Taliban regime and cleared al Qaeda out of Afghanistan. If the Taliban are able to return to power, there's little reason to believe the same thing wouldn't happen again. We have achieved nothing if after driving the Taliban out of the country, they can simply drive back to Kabul.
So our core mission is to leave Afghanistan in a state where the Afghans, the majority of whom don't want a Taliban return, can defend themselves from a Taliban takeover. That is victory. Notice that defeating the Taliban, so there's peace in the country, while nice, is not strictly required.
This goal is finally, belatedly, 5 years too late, arriving. The Afghans themselves recently defeated a major Taliban assault in Kandahar. There's still time for us to blow it by not finishing the job.
-Card-Carrying American
http://cardcarryingamerican.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Card-Carrying-American/149565408390518
I may be a bit simple but if you are going to have a war you have to be willing to go through four stages and get through them as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Decide the aims and objectives
Fight the war
Win the war
Go home.
There is the old joke about war being too important to be left to generals. But when it's left to politicians it gets stuck at and bounces between stage one and two. It gets fought like a political campaign; an endless series of photo ops, obfuscations and policy flip flops. Our lot cannot remember whether it's currently a flip or a flop. It's the worst of all worlds, the slow accumulation of casualties, no explanation to the public to keep them onside, no agreed measures of success. It becomes an endless war because of the dithering. The latest brainwave is that the Taliban should be invited for talks about joining the government!!. As long as they promise to be nice in future I guess.
On a related note, Obama has given an interview to the BBC today in which he says he would be prepared to repeat the raid on Pakistan if the targets are right. I'm impressed he agreed to the raid without telling the Pakistanis. They are the elephant in the room. We've just signed up to a new aid package to them, all of which will be spent wisely.
Bin Laden was the legitimate eye we sought ,enough is too much now.
and if you dont use it you lose it. management 101.
we will have continuious on going wars until we are completely bankrupt and default on our loans.
then americans will be forced to trade war money for food. now they love their capitalism and its imperialism agenda way too much to give it up.