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.
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.
U.S. out !
To be there slaughtering our finest, standing in the world, and everything else one must have the talent not to think.
At least bless them all enough to bring them home to their families, communities and economy.
Most were trained in Afghanistan/ Pakistan border region.
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.
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.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/07/30/robertson.al.qaeda.full/index.html
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.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/07/30/robertson.al.qaeda.full/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/07/30/robertson.al.qaeda.full/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/07/30/robertson.al.qaeda.training/index.html
Acting for these reasons under Chapter VII of the Charter of the United
Nations,
1. Decides to extend the authorization.. of the International Security Assistance Force...
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.
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.
"The one thing history teaches, is that man learns nothing from history..!"
Hegel...
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.
NATO forces will stay there as long it is deemed necessary.
Deal with it.
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?
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.
Only if those without shred of concern for future of Afghanistan have their way... and they won't.
This is a lie.