Troop Deaths Double In Afghanistan

Here's something you won't see in the mainstream media ... unless you see it associated with George W. Bush "starting it."

The number of U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan has roughly doubled in the first three months of 2010 compared to the same period last year as Washington has added tens of thousands of additional soldiers to reverse the Taliban's momentum.

Those deaths have been accompanied by a dramatic spike in the number of wounded, with injuries more than tripling in the first two months of the year and trending in the same direction based on the latest available data for March.

U.S. officials have warned that casualties are likely to rise even further as the Pentagon completes its deployment of 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan and sets its sights on the Taliban's home base ofKandahar province, where a major operation is expected in the coming months.

"We must steel ourselves, no matter how successful we are on any given day, for harder days yet to come," Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a briefing last month.

In total, 57 U.S. troops were killed here during the first two months of 2010 compared with 28 in January and February of last year, an increase of more than 100 percent, according to Pentagon figures compiled by The Associated Press. At least 20 American service members have been killed so far in March, an average of about 0.8 per day, compared to 13, or 0.4 per day, a year ago.

The steady rise in combat deaths has generated less public reaction in the United States than the spike in casualties last summer and fall, which undermined public support in the U.S. for the 8-year-old American-led mission here. Fighting traditionally tapers off in Afghanistan during winter months, only to peak in the summer.

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The West Point Speech

What do you make of the West Point speech?

The usual pundits seem to think our President is acknowledging that what we have here, is not a man-made disaster, but rather a real war on terror. He did not say that. I don't think he meant that. Obama had to acknowledge a threat to justify increasing troop levels in Afghanistan. Then he dismissed it all, with a date for withdrawal.

Here's more that I find odd:

He "reminded" us that Islam is one of the world's "greatest religions," and that we have forged a new beginning between America and the Muslim World – one that recognizes our mutual interest in breaking a cycle of conflict.

Really? I don't think so. Where is the explanation, Mr. President, of how you have done this. Nothing has changed in the Muslim world. Most Americans are infidels. Radical Islam is planning our deaths. We saw that at Fort Hood, and our President would not call it what it was - 14 murders at the hand of a radical Islamiscist. It is known as jihad. He has done nothing...nothing to quell radical Islam, just as no Islamic country has done anything to quell radical Islam.

He said combat troops will be gone from Iraq by summer 2010 and all troops will be gone by the end of 2011. He said that he will send 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, and they will begin to return from Afghanistan in 18 months. He said he is giving the troops what they need to "seize the initiative." You and I know, that he doesn't know this to be true. He has set a definite timeline and radical Islam is nothing if not patient.

After telling the enemy when we will leave, he outlined the battle we are facing, and he got this right, at least in part:

"no idle danger, no hypothetical threat."

"This danger will only grow if the region slides backwards, and al Qaeda can operate with impunity."

Since 9/11, al Qaeda’s safe-havens have been the source of attacks against London and Amman and Bali.

We must keep the pressure on al Qaeda. ...we know that al Qaeda and other extremists seek nuclear weapons, and we have every reason to believe that they would use them.

I make this decision because I am convinced that our security is at stake in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The security of the U.S. and the American people is at stake.

He said the struggle against violent extremism will not be finished quickly, and it extends well beyond Afghanistan and Pakistan. He said that the dangers to a free society "involve disorderly regions and diffuse enemies. He is loathe to speak it - that the disorderly regions and diffuse extremism comes only from Muslim countries.

President Obama ignored that 9-11-01 changed everything, forever. The battle with radical Islam will not end, and it will not be over in 18 months - and especially not in Afghanistan or Pakistan. This is an unending battle and we ignore it at our peril.

Obama talked to this young group of cadets about the economic problems we face and the burden of the cost of the war..."we simply cannot afford to ignore the price of these wars."

That is a real confidence builder. We are facing "no idle danger and he is "convinced" our security is at state, but "we simply cannot afford to ignore the price of these wars." In my opinion, this conversation had no place in this speech - it was inappropriate conversation on a night when he speaks of the importance of this war, and the risks if it is not won.

He talked about his quest to end the threat of weapons of mass destruction, and his goal to achieve a world without them - yet, he cannot stand up to Iran. His diplomacy cannot convince Russia and China to stand up to Iran. Obama believes that "true security" will come for those who will reject WMD. And who will that be? Those days are gone. Terrible weapons are a reality, and I pray that ours our "more terrible" than theirs. I pray that we have the courage to use them, if it is absolutely necessary - and that we have the wisdom to know that time.

So, the question to President Obama is - what happens when you realize that not only can you not tamp down the aggression in 18 months, but what happens when you realize that we will never again be without the threat of attack from radical Islam.

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Losing Afghanistan and Losing America

What has changed?

In the battle of Antietam during the Civil War, our nation was willing to sustain 23,000 casualties in a single battle and over half a million American men (and boys) during the war. This occurred at a time when the population of the United States was just over 30 million people.

During World War II, the United States sustained just under half a million war casualties to squash a threat to the world's security.

In both of these wars (and the wars before and in between them), the United States supported the nation's war efforts. The loss of thousands and even hundreds of thousands of lives was tragic, but Americans understood that such was the reality of war.

In 2009, we no longer have the will to engage in war.

A few years ago, the tragic loss of 18 lives in Somalia and the horrid treatment of the dead and dying Americans was enough of a rallying cry to pull out. In Antietam, a single cannon shot could wipe out 18 soldiers.

In Iraq, just over 4,000 American soldiers have lost their lives from the beginning of the war in 2003 through 2009. And by 2007, America was ready to pull out. It was considered a debacle.

Afghanistan is now becoming a more and more desperate situation. Desperate from the standpoint that more and more lives are being lost on a weekly basis. And America has a low tolerance for the loss of life during war.

So what has changed?

It is my belief that America will never again be able to fight in a major military conflict. If Israel is attacked in a massive way by its islamic neighbors, America will not be there to help. If China rises up and decides to attack South Korea, or Taiwan or Japan, America cannot be counted on to defend these allies.

America doesn't have the stomach for war.

This is a direct result of 40 plus years of liberal philosophical teaching in our public education institutions. Liberals have convinced us that we haven't been on the right side of any war. Liberals have convinced us that we do not have a superior economic system or a superior political system. Liberals have convinced us that our freedoms are not worth fighting for. Liberals have convinced us that democracy and freedom and the free enterprise system aren't worth defending.

And America has bought it.

Probably not if you phrased it in those terms. Most Americans would say that they think freedom and democracy and America itself is worth fighting for. But not if it means the loss of life. Somehow, we've gotten it in our heads that we should be able to march into a country and fight a war and win it without the loss of life. And we should be able to do it quickly. Like the movies. Two hours at most. And none of the major characters, the good guys, will ever die.

That's why Obama can't decide what to do in Afghanistan. It's not a movie. It's not a sound bite. The telepromter doesn't have an easy-to-quote speech prepared.

Afghanistan will require a decision. A hard decision. One that could cost American lives.

And Obama doesn't have the stomach for that. Neither does America.

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US Looks to Vietnam for Tips on How to Lose

Associated Press: (Brussels):

Top U.S. officials have reached out to a leading Vietnam war scholar to discuss the similarities of that conflict 40 years ago with American involvement in Afghanistan, where the U.S. is seeking ways to isolate an elusive guerrilla force and win over a skeptical local population.

The overture to Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Stanley Karnow, who opposes the Afghan war, comes as the U.S. is evaluating its strategy there…

McChrystal and Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. special envoy to the country, telephoned Karnow on July 27 in an apparent effort to apply the lessons of Vietnam to the Afghan war, which started in 2001 when U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban regime in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

Among the concerns voiced by historians is the credibility of President Hamid Karzai’s government, which is widely perceived as being plagued by graft and corruption. They draw a parallel between Afghanistan’s presidential election on Aug. 20 and the failed effort in Vietnam to legitimize a military regime lacking broad popular support through an imposed presidential election in 1967.

"Holbrooke rang me from Kabul and passed the phone to the general," said Karnow, who authored the seminal 1983 book, "Vietnam: A History."

Holbrooke confirmed to The Associated Press that the three men discussed similarities between the two wars. "We discussed the two situations and what to do," he said during a visit last week to NATO headquarters in Brussels.

In an interview Thursday with the AP, Karnow said it was the first time he had ever been consulted by U.S. commanders to discuss the war. He did not elaborate on the specifics of the conversation.

When asked what could be drawn from the Vietnam experience, Karnow replied: "What did we learn from Vietnam? We learned that we shouldn’t have been there in the first place. Obama and everybody else seem to want to be in Afghanistan, but not I."

"It now seems unthinkable that the U.S. could lose (in Afghanistan), but that’s what experts … thought in Vietnam in 1967," he said at his Maryland home. "It could be that there will be no real conclusion and that it will go on for a long time until the American public grows tired of it." …

Isn’t that great? The Obama administration is reaching out to people who can tell them how to lose a war against all odds.

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Remember The War?

Remember under President George W. Bush when every car bombing and every single Iraq war death was front page news? Every week seemed to bring some new “grim milestone” having to do with the war that the media would hype endlessly? I had a love-hate relationship with that reporting. On one hand, every single US life lost in war is a tragedy and is worthy of attention and should never, ever be swept under the rug for the sake of politics. On the other hand, the media’s fascination with war casualties to the near exclusion of all other news about the war bordered on ghoulish.

Well now we’ve got a new President who, with the war in Iraq won (though nobody on the left will admit it), is focusing on the war in Afghanistan. He’s escalated the war in Afghanistan and, frankly, I support what he’s trying to do. He’s not cutting and running, he’s finishing what we started.

But what’s curious is, there just doesn’t seem to be a lot of attention being given to that war. And certainly the endless coverage and hand-wringing from the media about the war casualties is missing. The war in Afghanistan just saw its deadliest month ever, and yet I doubt 60 Minutes will be doing a special. I don’t think Katie Couric is going to be interviewing any families of lost soldiers. I doubt very much if Keith Olberman or Chris Matthews will mention it at all.

Which is a pretty disgusting double standard, no? When war was a convenient political topic for Democrats it was in the news endlessly, and all of the coverage was slanted toward the side of the issue that was most beneficial to Democrats. Troop deaths. Lack of progress. New attacks from the enemy. War protests. Those stories are still out there, but now that it’s a Democrat President prosecuting the war suddenly the stories don’t seem as important. And the perspective the stories are covered from is all different.

Funny how that works, no?

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Afghan Government to Investigate U.S. Bombing

President Hamid Karzai ordered a probe Wednesday into allegations by local officials that more than 30 civilians were killed this week in a bombing by U.S.-led troops battling militants in western Afghanistan.

Karzai, currently in the United States, will raise the issue of civilian deaths with President Barack Obama, a statement from Karzai's office said. The two presidents were scheduled to hold their first face-to-face meeting later Wednesday.

Civilian deaths have caused increasing friction between the Afghan and U.S. governments, and Karzai has long pleaded with American officials to reduce the number of civilian casualties in their operations. U.S. and NATO officials accuse the Taliban militants of fighting from within civilian homes, thus putting them in danger.

Local officials said Tuesday that bombing runs called by U.S. forces killed dozens of civilians in Gerani village in Farah province's Bala Buluk district.

Personally, I think the Afghan government should insist on a harshly worded statement from the U.N.

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Obama and Escalation in Afghanistan

President Obama went on CBS News' "Face the Nation" Sunday to make the case for his great big war in Afghanistan.

The good news is that Obama says, "What I will not do is to simply assume that more troops always results in an improved situation."

The bad news is that Obama is dispatching more troops to a country that has never taken well to occupation.

So where is the MoveOn.org blast condemning the ramping up of an undeclared war and the president's refusal to rule out an even more dramatic expansion of that war to Pakistan? Where is the memo from the Center for American Progress outlining the case against giving the president "a blank check for endless war"?

Don't hold your breath, says John Stauber, executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy and the co-author of Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq and The Best War Ever: Lies, Damned Lies and the Mess in Iraq, two of the most scathing books on the Bush-Cheney administration and its war in Iraq.

In a no-holds-barred critique of groups that earned their reputations as critics of the rush to invade and occupy Iraq, Stauber argues that the Obama administration has effectively co-opted some of the nation's most high-profile anti-war groups.

Here's what Stauber writes in a piece titled: "How Obama Took Over the Peace Movement," which appears on the CMD website:

John Podesta's liberal think tank the Center for American Progress strongly supports Barack Obama's escalation of the US wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is best evidenced by Sustainable Security in Afghanistan, a CAP report by Lawrence J. Korb. Podesta served as the head of Obama's transition team, and CAP's support for Obama's wars is the latest step in a successful co-option of the US peace movement by Obama's political aids and the Democratic Party.

CAP and the five million member liberal lobby group MoveOn were behind Americans Against Escalation in Iraq (AAEI), a coalition that spent tens of millions of dollars using Iraq as a political bludgeon against Republican politicians, while refusing to pressure the Democratic Congress to actually cut off funding for the war. AAEI was operated by two of Barack Obama's top political aids, Steve Hildebrand and Paul Tewes, and by Brad Woodhouse of Americans United for Change and USAction.

Today Woodhouse is Obama's Director of Communications and Research for the Democratic National Committee. He controls the massive email list called Obama for America composed of the many millions of people who gave money and love to the Democratic peace candidate and might be wondering what the heck he is up to in Afghanistan and Pakistan. MoveOn built its list by organizing vigils and ads for peace and by then supporting Obama for president; today it operates as a full-time cheerleader supporting Obama's policy agenda. Some of us saw this unfolding years ago. Others are probably shocked watching their peace candidate escalating a war and sounding so much like the previous administration in his rationale for doing so.

Ouch!

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