By US Deaths, As of Today, Afghanistan is Obama's War

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.