Another 1,000 Americans Dead in Afghanistan by 2011?
43 American Soldiers Killed in First Month of Surge,
1,000 More Deaths Projected by Summer 2011
Forty-three American soldiers were killed in July, the first month of the surge in southern Afghanistan, one-third of the year's toll of 128 thus far. With Pentagon strategists forecasting 18-24 months of hard fighting in Kandahar and Helmand provinces, the current mortality rate would mean an additional one thousand American deaths by summer 2011.
The total number of Americans killed in Afghanistan since 2002 is now 756.
Even with the Afghan war crowded out of media coverage by the economic crisis, March 2009 polling showed that 42 percent of Americans think the Afghanistan venture is a mistake, up from 30 percent in February. Those trend lines will continue as American casualties rise. "It is what we expected", a Pentagon official told the Los Angeles Times [7/07/09]
Meanwhile, a leading military strategist, Stephen Biddle, writes that a new antiwar movement will be harder for President Obama to overcome than the opposition to the Bush Administration wars. [see The American Interest, July/August 2009]. According to Biddle,
[Obama] heads a Democratic Party that is already divided on the Afghan war and likely to grow more so over time...Obama could face a situation in which a bipartisan antiwar coalition threatens the majority he will need to maintain funding for an increasingly unpopular war [since] votes on many budgets over several years will be needed to bring this war to a successful conclusion.
The war is a "hard sell", Biddle emphasizes, because "the strongest part of the Administration's case for war, the link between Afghanistan and al-Qaeda, is ultimately indirect." Beltway wags already are pointing out that the 9/11 attacks were launched from a safe haven in Hamburg, Germany, not from a cave in the Hindu Kush. With no al-Qaeda visible in Afghanistan, the US military strategy is focused on fighting the Taliban and other insurgents, which is tipping the conflict into "a popular revolt in some parts of southern Afghanistan", where "villagers in some districts have taken up arms against foreign troops to protect their homes or in anger after losing relatives in airstrikes", according to the NY Times' Carlotta Gall. [7/03/09]
By many accounts, the generals in Afghanistan soon will be asking for an escalation of more US troops for this fight against the popular revolt.
In Pakistan, where al-Qaeda and more than one Taliban exist, the US-supported offensive in the Swat Valley has sputtered towards a dangerous quagmire. The wealthy landowning class is unwilling to return, causing a "significant blow to the Pakistani military's campaign to restore Swat as a stable, prosperous part of Pakistan." [NYT, 7/29/09]. Ironically, American aid officials have been "almost completely neutered" in their efforts to win the hearts and minds of uprooted Pakistanis in refugee camps where, instead, Islamist and jihadist groups "openly work the camps", according to the Times' eyewitness account.
Meanwhile, the US is between Iraq and a hard place, as plans creep forward to withdraw 80,000 US troops in the coming year, and all 130,000 by 2011. Violence has been sharply reduced as a result of the 2007-2008 troop surge, subsidized payments to 90,000 Sunni insurgents paid not to shoot at American troops, and a strategic decision by the governing Shi'a coalition to play to nationalist opinion favoring the end to occupation. As American troops leave in the next years, underlying conflicts could expand violently, creating an unpredictable political embarrassment for the Pentagon and the Obama presidency.
This week a leaked Pentagon memo advised the US to "declare victory and go home." [NYT, 7/31/09]. Such a projection is a superpower fantasy, since there is unlikely to be any "victory" at all in Iraq. With American troops indeed going home or transitioning rapidly to Afghanistan, what troops will Obama deploy if there is a meltdown in Iraq? Or will those who caused the Iraq war exploit the opportunity to lay the blame for "losing Iraq" on Obama?
The Congressional Budget Office has projected the additional war costs for the next decade [FY 2009-FY 2018] as high as $865 billion, ten years being the projected length of a counterinsurgency campaign. The budgetary cost of Iraq, Afghanistan and the so-called Global War on Terror was projected by the CBO to be as high as $1.7 trillion in direct costs alone by 2018.
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Bush had his pointless unwinnable war in Iraq, Now Obama has his pointless unwinnable war in Afghanistan. That's called presidential continuity.
Iraqi war was pointless. I agree. But the war in Iraq was won. Yes the cost was too high. But it is a significant victory.
Taliban and various Muslims Jihadists will be defeated in Afghanistan also.
Since Bush neglected t fro 7 years, the battle for Afghanistan is just beginning.
Good luck to NATO forces and reconstruction teams from around the world. The civilized world is with you. Not the Taliban appeasers.
How can anyone think that we are going to pacify a place that the British and the Soviets failed to pacify? Afghanistan is not a country, it's a time warp.
U.S. out !
Bravo !!
To be there slaughtering our finest, standing in the world, and everything else one must have the talent not to think.
Gawd bless 'em all. Somebody has to do it. Pertectin' our FREEEEEEEDOM!!! USA, USA, USA!!!!
Nobody HAS to do this. Only a select, prevaricating few have the "abilities" to razionaliize this. Nobody would oppose this if the were told the truth. Res ipsa locquiter.
At least bless them all enough to bring them home to their families, communities and economy.
This tends to be a one sided set of posts because bias by the post police. Aparently compelling information from McCain's admission on a Sunday morning national news interview 7 years ago is off limits.
Police in Belgium say they have arrested 14 people suspected of being members of the al-Qaeda network.
Most were trained in Afghanistan/ Pakistan border region.
I don't believe the empire's propaganda, and I don't believe that the empire cares about anything but dominance.
You said "end of story" a half dozen posts ago. Your will to dominate this discussion is a reflection of the monstrosity you are nervously defending. The dictator plays Chaplin this time. Interesting role reversal.
The news are from Belgium. So your argument is irrelevant.
"... While the classrooms are safer from drone attacks than the pre-9/11 sessions on the mountainsides the content seems to have changed to match new targeting plans.
Suicide vest and IED construction show how the curriculum is being modified for today's combat with U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Making and handling explosives, as well as fuse construction, show the sessions may also be geared for killing in Europe and the United States."
http://www
Between March and July 2008 Vinas stated that he attended three al Qaeda training courses, which focused on weapons, explosives, and rocket-based or propelled weaponry.
During these classes, attended by 10-20 recruits, Vinas was taught how to handle a large variety of weapons and explosives, some of them of military grade sophistication, according to his account.
Vinas stated that he was also instructed how to prepare and place fuses, how to test batteries, how to use voltmeters and how to build circuitry for a bomb. According to his account, al Qaeda also offered a wide variety of other courses including electronics, sniper, and poisons training.
Vinas' training during this period was very similar to the training described by members of the French-Belgian group. Othmani, the French recruit, stated that the group were given explosives training and taught how to fire rocket launchers and RPGs.
http://www
"Despite not being able to operate training camps on anything like the scale they did in Afghanistan, the accounts suggest that al Qaeda has been able to sustain many of its training operations by confining them to small dwellings in the remote mountains of Waziristan. Inside these dwellings bomb-making training appears to have been emphasized, some of it very sophistica
http://www
"Bryant Vinas -- a U.S. citizen who says he traveled to Pakistan in September 2007 to fight against Americans in Afghanistan -- stated that between March and July 2008 he attended three al Qaeda training courses, which focused on weapons, explosives, and rocket-based or -propelled weaponry."
http://www
Security Council Resolution language on Afghanistan:
Acting for these reasons under Chapter VII of the Charter of the United
Nations,
1. Decides to extend the authorizat
2. Authorizes the Member States participating in the International Security
Assistance Force to take all necessary measures to fulfil the mandate of the
International Security Assistance Force;
3. Calls upon Member States to contribute personnel, equipment and other
resources to the International Security Assistance Force.
The occupation and rebuiding of Afghanistan must continue, and it will continue.
And those who oppose it are wrong for an entire range of reasons.
End of story.
An acquaintance of mine recently expressed his feeling that while our involvement in Afghanistan gives him great pause, he believes in the end that we should be there. I agree that the question is a difficult one. But in the end, if I were calling the shots, I would have all of our troops out of Afghanistan. It is my belief that it is one thing to be there to help another nation deal with its internal problems with financial assistance, it is another thing for our military troops to be there trying to make Afghanistan into a nation as we would see it.
I don't argue with our original decision to go into Afghanistan to go after those who instigated the attack on us in 2001. But there came a time when it was time to leave. The longer we remain there with our military, the more grist we give to those who hate us in the Arab and Muslim world. It's time for us to let Afghanistan right itself, or not, as it sees itself through the eyes of its citizens. We have more than enough of our own internal problems with which to deal and the money and effort we are now throwing towards Afghanistan would be better spent on ourselves.
Now let me get back to my music. If President Obama is not going to take my advice, I may as well enjoy myself as best as I can.
Making irresponsible projections of possible causalities is an ignominious foundation to develop discussion on the very complex issue of Middle Eastern politics. Most educated Westerners are too media savvy to fall for this kind of agitprop.
Tom; and my name is Tom too, we did all this 35-40 years ago, and we had a lot of communication then me in the east you in the west mostly and it's Deja Vous, all over again...!
"The one thing history teaches, is that man learns nothing from history..!
Hegel...
Those who intend to quote must try to post actual quotes rather than some vaguely remembered mangled version thereof.
Hegelian dialectis has a much more complex take on this. Even when taking into consideration the actual quote.
Regardless, post modernists reject the entire notion than a grand narrative can deliver veridical view of anything, let alone language game that includes anthropomorphic notions about history.
Afghanistan occupation is necessary, just and approved by the international political community.
NATO forces will stay there as long it is deemed necessary.
Deal with it.
Slow down there bullet breath. Necessary for what again? Slide your foot further into your mouth and answer - IF YOU CAN.
It is just to only those jonesing for death. WE are pelting the same hamlets that USSR did WHILE they LOST their vainity garrison, aren't "we". That is all this is. Our communities, generations and economy need these sioldiers alive and contributing to such, not death counts.
It was approved by Cheney Corp.'s corpus of LIES. That is a pretty encompassing slate. The international "political" community is a cabalof corporacketism, so hardly leagal. Where is your right to life when it is germane?
Security Council Resolutions are illegal becuase they are all "cabal of corporacke
Really? And all this hyperactive invective in defense of Al Qaeda and Taliban? Good one.
What tangled web they weave when they practice to deceive.
In Afghanistan, we are fighting an enemy who never attacked us. Al-Qaeda operatives took refuge there for a time, but they are a criminal organization and not a military opponent. They fled the country at the first sign of trouble, leaving our military stranded in a country fighting a vicious enemy that we created for ourselves. Eventually, the United States will be forced to withdraw from Afghanistan and nothing will have been accomplished there a la Vietnam.
"Eventually, the United States will be forced to withdraw from Afghanistan and nothing will have been accomplished there a la Vietnam."
Only if those without shred of concern for future of Afghanistan have their way... and they won't.
"Al-Qaeda operatives took refuge there for a time."
This is a lie.
The Afghan War is morphing into a mirror image of Vietnam. While the differences are obvious, the similarities are frightening. Asymmetrical warfare is the well established model for defeating a superpower. It worked in Vietnam, and much more importantly -- it worked in Afghanistan.
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