By the time you read this it's probably more. Yet the 592 deaths barely tell the story. Each dead soldier left a family: including maybe a small child or two, all of these people devastated by their loss. Thousands more U.S. troops have been severely wounded and will suffer a lifetime of disability and pain.
The death count for Afghans is far higher, destroying family after family and orphaning God knows how many children, along with killing and maiming many other children. All of this in the name of Peace. And the U.S. is no closer to a solution or getting out than it was when President Obama launched this surge in December, 2009
Meanwhile, the U.S. news media gives it little coverage, as they also give little coverage to the continuing death and destruction in the Iraq War. The American dead are shipped home in body bags and they and their families receive little or no coverage, as if they didn't exist. But if a Hollywood star has drug problems, it's headline news, covered in nauseating detail.
10 years into the Afghan War, why is it being fought? Why is the Iraq War being fought? ThinkProgress reported the FY2011 cost of the Afghan war is $113 billion. Do we not have better uses for that money? For teachers? Police? Firefighters? Operation Head Start and school meals for poor children? Our government is borrowing 40% of all the money it spends but spends ever more on weapons and wars as it races to fiscal and moral bankruptcy!
If this insanity troubles you as it does me, please raise your voice. What you think matters and if enough of us raise our voices, our war mad government will be forced to respond to the will of the people.
Dick
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