Saturday, August 07, 2010

For what?

As of July, 2010, 1,822 coalition troops have been killed in Afghanistan - and it's getting worse. June was the deadliest month ever for Americans in Afghanistan - but that record didn't last long. July was even worse.

Our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have already killed over twice as many coalition troops as people killed by al-Qaeda in the September 11th attacks. And that's not including the wounded, disabled and disfigured soldiers. It's not including the wrecked marriages and ruined lives of soldiers and their families. The Army averaged one suicide per day last month. At this rate, we'll lose more soldiers to suicide than roadside bombs very soon. And a lot of soldiers are killing themselves unintentionally, too.

Nor does it include the hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqi and Afghan civilians.

You know what we need more of?

Entrepreneurs. This guy makes the case.

Sunday, August 01, 2010

Will the anti-war crowd finally say something now?

"WASHINGTON – Defense Secretary Robert Gates is predicting that only a small number of U.S. forces will come home from Afghanistan when a presidentially mandated withdrawal begins a year from now." -AP article, via Yahoo!

According to the Congressional Research Service, there are over twice as many US troops in Afghanistan as when Obama took office. According to the AP article linked above, there will be well over three times as many by the end of this summer.

This is like a shady oriental rug store doubling its prices right before having a 50% off sale. Actually, that's not fair to the rug dealer. This is more like the rug dealer tripling his prices before advertising a minor, but undetermined discount.

I'm thirty years old, and we've been at war in Afghanistan for one-third of my life. My college-age sister was in fourth-grade when we invaded Afghanistan. In 2010, the year in which Afghanistan became the longest-lasting war in American history, we have three times the number of troops as when Obama was swept to office by an American public already tired of war.