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By US Deaths, As of Today, Afghanistan is Obama's War
575: That's how many U.S. soldiers have lost their lives in the Afghanistan war since Barack Obama became President at noon on January 20, 2009, according to the icasualties.org website, which tracks U.S. soldiers' deaths using reports received from the Department of Defense - and which is widely cited in the media as a source of information on U.S. deaths.
According to the same website, 575 is also the number of U.S. soldiers who lost their lives in the Afghanistan war during the Presidency of George W. Bush.
Therefore, total U.S. deaths in Afghanistan have doubled in Afghanistan under President Obama, and when the next U.S. soldier is reported dead, the majority of U.S. deaths in Afghanistan will have occurred under President Obama.
This grim landmark should be reported in the media, and White House reporters should ask Robert Gibbs to comment on it. It is quite relevant to Gibbs' implicit attempt to marginalize critics of the war in Afghanistan by claiming that they wouldn't be satisfied with anything less than the abolition of the Pentagon. The majority of Americans - including the overwhelming majority of Democrats, and at least 60% of House Democrats - are deeply skeptical of the Administration's Afghanistan policy not because they are knee-jerk pacifists - obviously they are not - but because the human and financial cost of the war is rising, we have nothing to show for the increased cost, and the Administration has not articulated a clear plan to reach the endgame; indeed, Administration officials, led by General Petraeus, have just launched a public relations campaign to undermine the substantial drawdown in troops next summer that Democratic leaders in Congress, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, have said that they expect.
This grim landmark is not reported directly by the icasualties.org website - you have to have to go to the right places on the website to retrieve the data and then calculate it from the data given. The data retrieval and arithmetic is straightforward, but I will carefully explain it here so that any reader - and particular any reporter and news editor - can easily reproduce it.
The top-level organization of the icasualties.org website is divided into two parts, according to the designations previously given to the "two wars" by the Department of Defense: "Operation Iraqi Freedom" and "Operation Enduring Freedom." The latter designation includes not just U.S. deaths in Afghanistan, but also non-Iraq U.S. deaths in the conflicts formerly known collectively as the "Global War on Terror"; for example, it includes deaths in the Philippines and Djibouti, far away from Afghanistan.
But you can find in the database U.S. deaths in Afghanistan since 2001 by year and month by first going to this link, and then, underneath the table that initially appears under "Fatalities by Year and Month," choosing in the pop-up menus, "US" for nationality, "All Fatalities" for Fatality Type, and "Afghanistan Only" for Theatre.
You should then see a table that looks like this (view as web page) (download excel spread sheet).
As shown beneath the table, when you sum the yearly totals you get:
Total: 1150 2001-2008: 564 2009-2010: 586
But this wouldn't give the right figures for Bush and Obama, because it would allocate all of January 2009 to Obama, when he was only President from noon on January 20.
Subtracting the 14 deaths of January 2009 from the total for 2009-10 gives:
2001-2008: 564 2009-2010 (not counting 1/09): 572
You can find the daily data for January 2009 by going to this link:
Scrolling down to January 2009, of the 14 deaths in Afghanistan (there was a January 30 death in Djibouti), 11 took place before January 20 and 3 took place after January 20.
Adding 11 to 564 and 3 to 572 gives:
Totals: Bush: 575 Obama: 575 News media generally like landmarks as a way to visit and explain the U.S. death toll from the wars.
This landmark is surely a worthy candidate for consideration.
I expect Robert Gibbs to be asked about it.
- Posted in
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17 Comments so far
Show AllI expect Robert Gibbs to be asked about it.
NOT by the MSM. Therefore, he will NOT be asked about it.
Comon... this is a total waist of time and column space. Is there some implied "contest" going on here by Naiman?
Why not just simply state the facts in one sentence and be done for chrissakes?
Here... I'll do it for you:
"This is Americas Elite's WAR - just like the countless others in the past and the endless ones to come."
DONE!
Because that is a subjective opinion, & not an objective report, which is supposed to be the hallmark of good journalism.
Not to say that it is, anymore, or ever really was!
But if done right, objective reporting is paired with verifiable data.
- the Afghanistan war -
- the war in Afghanistan -
I repeat in my inevitably boring and repetitive way that Afghanistan is part and only part of the larger insanity started by Public Law 107-40, a law which continues to get ignored (and thus our ordeal continues and worsens).
- in the conflicts formerly known collectively as the "Global War on Terror"; -
I continue to suggest that part of the solution involves replacing MIC-terminology with our own.
Thus and ergo, I suggest again that we call it
DAFT, the Defense against Future Terrorism war.
And as always, it being a Congressional election year, I say that it is all the fault of incumbents in Congress.
And it is the fault of all the incumbents in Congress.
Look at 'em all. There's our problem.
It may be important to note that according to the article the number of U.S. soldiers who have died according to that web site have been taken from figures that have been supplied by the Department of Defense. Since the administrations and the military under George W. Bush and Barack Obama have had very little credibility in regard to telling the truth to the American people one has to wonder why Robert Naiman seems rather willing to take the DoD at their word when he calculates that 575 American soldiers have died when Bush was president and 575 have perished now that Barack Obama has taken over from Bush.
I also believe that Mr. Naiman should have pointed out that these American soldiers have died in Afghanistan for the simple reason that the Afghans were defending their country from the invading force which, of course, is the United States military.
I wonder how many have died since the final tour required of them ended. I would count the suicides resultant from mental war wounds (killing babies bothers some peoples' consciences eventually) as well as those dying from medical complications resultant from physical war wounds. How many have died later on after their military years from the effects of depleted uranium? How many have died years later due to the often untested (other than upon soldiers) enforced vaccinations?
The US military knows and reports exactly the casualties of its troops.
There is no getting around these numbers.
The number of wounded is probably a better indicator of the tragedy because so many have devastating blast injuries. (Also because the number of wounded far surpasses the number of casualties)
I think Mr. Naiman raised an important and underreported point about the war.
The media should make a big deal of the injuries and deaths.
That would do more than anything to bring the war to a close.
Is that likely to happen? Of course not.
What about the dead Afghani?
One more thing. I feel tempted to vilify the American soldiers, but too many of them are blacks and latinos who, in the glorious economic boom of the last decade, had to choose between the army and jail.
That's a hard choice.
And this choice didn't fall from the sky. The establishment is to blame.
Sometimes I wonder what would happen if people got desperate enough to start assassinating bankers and politicians rather than go kill Afghans. That's the key of the game. Keep them on a short leash, but not so short that they'd bite you.
"I feel tempted to vilify the American soldiers, but too many of them are blacks and latinos who, in the glorious economic boom of the last decade, had to choose between the army and jail. That's a hard choice. And this choice didn't fall from the sky. The establishment is to blame."
And you know how that none of the "whites" faced the same choice, and found it as "hard" a "choice" as the "too many of them" who "are blacks and latinos"?
You're right, of course. I meant, and should have said, "poor people".
Something that has always puzzled me. We make these pronouncements, "We will be out of (insert nation here) by (insert date here).
I interpret this as, we've lost the war and will leave, but we'll have to stay another (year? decade?) before we do. That means that we are going to have perhaps hundreds of our troops and God only knows how many (insert name of people here) killed just for hanging around until we reach our "leave by" date, which always seems to be extended.
If we are planning to leave in the future, why not now and save many lives?
I wrote the following several years ago, but it still seems apropos.
----------------------
Forgotten Wars, Forgotten Warriors
Korea, they say, was not a war.
It was a “Police Action.”
Which would you rather die as?
A “policeman,” or a soldier?
Or would you perhaps rather live?
At least Korea had a reason,
Flawed, of course, but a reason.
Most of the world pitched in to fight
On one side or the other.
How many died before it finally burned out?
Vietnam was an accident, turned into a war.
A people who fought for their independence.
A millennium against the Chinese,
A century against the French.
Thousands died, were tortured, jailed.
Overrun by Japan, they fought for freedom.
At war’s end, they were given back to France,
So again they had to fight;
At Dien Bien Phu, they won.
The time of rejoicing was short.
Like Korea, the country was divided up.
The Western Nations made the decision.
South Vietnam to be “ours”
North Vietnam to be “theirs.”
No one asked the People of their desires.
Once more the Vietnamese had to fight
To expel the foreign occupiers,
Remove their puppet governments,
Reaffirm their independence.
Does hubris come with power, or vice versa?
Advisors were sent in
To help build the ARVN army.
Then to fight with the ARVN;
Finally to die with the ARVN.
Would you rather be No. 1, or No. 58,178?
Rulers were changed as the war went on.
The key is, the war went on.
The Phoenix burned on its pyre
Hatching new warriors for the cause.
For every village that dies, avengers arise.
A new Pearl Harbor was needed,
To fully unleash the dogs of war.
Tonkin Gulf was the catalyst,
A Black Op by the USA.
B-52's can destroy property, but not ideas.
We carpet bombed the north,
Poisoned the land with Orange and Purple.
Our troops were collateral damage,
Not to be recognized for years.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
As the years rolled on,
We found it impossible to tell
Friend from foe, in a country that
Simply wanted us out!
Strange that all peoples resist occupation.
Finally, the last helicopters left Embassy Row
Saigon became Ho Chi Minh City
And we had learned a hard lesson,
Now engraved upon a wall.
Only vets learn the real lesson of war.
Thirty years later,
Another “Pearl Harbor,”
Another pair of wars,
The foundation poured for yet another Wall.
They who dodged ‘Nam start a new war.
Read the above poem again
Make the place names Iraqi, Afghan, Pakistani.
Substitute DU for Agent Orange
Government denial is still there
We don’t count their dead, or show ours.
Now, in the Pentagon, the plans are made
At Bush/Cheney’s desperate urging.
We, or Israel (with our backing)
Are next to nuke Iran!
And thus unleash the final holocaust.
Russia, China, and others, no doubt,
Will retaliate with nukes of their own.
In time, not long, there will be few left
To count our dead, or remember.
The Nuclear Dragon will have eaten us all.
How long will it be before We the People
Break the wheel of death?
How many more thousands, or millions, to die
To be maimed, poisoned?
What happened to our Constitution?
Once upon a time we defended!
We fought for freedom, democracy,
Not oil and Empire...once upon a time.
We don’t need Roman Legions.
Let us remember our dead, not create more.
Stephen M. Osborn
19 December 2006
----------------------
But, nobody listens, and the profits of war go on.
When people say things that cannot be true, they aren't.
In this case, the soldiers are staying, and 0bama is lying - as are a lot of other people.
When the current adminstration claimed to move the soldiers out of Baghdad, it changed the location of city limits because it was easier than moving soldiers.
The policy has been and remains just fraud.
So when WASN'T it the Democrat's War? They worked hand in hand with the Republicans from the get-go.
What Obama and his people didn't get was:
Their "Admin" is not traversing a "tight-rope" with a "balance bar", and special shoes..rather a crotch-rope on which they can only painfully exhaust themselves with no meaningful progress.
This is the doing of the disgraceful Neo-Con/Israeli (and Weaponiers) domination of your feeble(How's your life?) country/future.
This polarization of the USA can no longer lead but to disaster.
I heard that the leader of South Vietnam, Diep, was killed by the CIA because he wanted to make a 'separate peace' in 1963 with Ho Chi Minh.
The given reason that Kennedy-CIA had him assassinated was because of the US embarrassment over the Buddhists who were burning themselves alive in protest of his right-wing dictatorship.
If that is the case, it would shed a new light on the origins of the Vietnam War's escalation by Johnson.
Second comment: does anyone know the real number of US casualties in the two current wars?
General McCaffrey said on the news that it was "36,000 US casualties" (dead and wounded) in Iraq. He didn't mention the DofD figure for Afghanistan, interestingly enough. This figure is probably low, and doesn't include all of the suicides and shell-shock patients.
Thanks.