With the death of an unnamed servicemember in a roadside bomb attack today, the number of U.S. dead in Afghanistan has crossed the 1,000 mark.
The Associated Press announced the figure it culled from its own count. Using different counting methods, Icasualties.org crossed the grim statistic last week and set the number at 1,007 deaths as of this afternoon. Both figures tally the number of servicemembers who died in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan, including personnel injured there but who later died overseas at facilities such as Walter Reed and Landstuhl Medical Centers. The difference between the tallies only underscores the difficulty in tracking casualties.
According to the Department of Defense, Operation Enduring Freedom has suffered a total of 1,076 fatalities, 791 of them in combat. The larger figure also includes deaths in Guantánamo Bay, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Jordan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Philippines, Seychelles, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkey, and Yemen. The tally from the entire theater crossed the 1,000 milestone back in February.
A little over a week from today, on June 7, the operation will mark its 104th month, making it the longest war in U.S. history.
How many more have to die before we leave?
As many as it takes for resistance fighters to repel the invaders.
I have several questions regarding this war and about our enemy. How large is the Air Force of our enemy? How many fighter jets and strategic bombers do they have ? Are their submarines nuclear powered or advanced diesel with ultra quiet propellers? How many men do they have in uniform? What kind of tanks do they use? Where are their ball bearing plants, their fuel dumps, their supply depots, their communications centers.
You say that none of this exists for our enemy- —-well just who in the hell are we fighting?
Montani semper liberi.
Afghanistan is kind of like a high altitude West Virginia with attitude.
That alone should have been sufficient for anyone contemplating a long war to invade Miami or some mall in Chagrin Falls or maybe a Chicago suburb instead.
T'was October 2001 as the U.S. went wading into the Afghaniscam. Tis May 2010 now. How the "mighty" are quagmired.
I read elsewhere that our military is questioning why their bravery in Afghanistan and Iraq is not more celebrated, i.e. there has been few Congressional Medal of Honors awarded in these two theaters. To me, this dearth of awards shows that maybe we still have some sense of proprietary left in America. How can you call the side using drones, battlebots, and mercenaries valorous and the side using
battered old AK-47s and coffee can bombs craven? I don’t mean to disparage our military but facts are facts. Maybe if we took the glory out of these crappy little wars we are in, we could muster the sense to get out immediately. Our honor as a nation is at stake here, not as staying the course but as finally having the decency TO GET THE F— OUT.
A memorial day we can all get behind http://corktageous.blogspot.com/2009/05/memorial-…
Mass murderers day…er…Memorial day, as we're all aware, is tomorrow. It's a disgrace of a holiday where we "honor" those who have murdered, raped, pillaged, nuked, and tortured for the state.
The state's (I refuse to call them "our") veterans deserve a lot of things–such as being spit on, or locked up for crimes against humanity–but respect is hardly one of them.
Some anarchists will tell you that the troops died for nothing. But that's not exactly true.
They died to butcher women and children. They died to make life miserable and unbearable for people all across the globe. They died to strengthen the police state. They died to take away our liberties. They died to enrich the military industrial complex. They died to make the world safe for US-style corporatist capitalism. They died to strengthen dictators and tyrants. They died to ensure US hegemony over the entire world, and to enslave the innocent. They died to destroy and steal from foreign countries. They died to worsen the economy and harm the poor. They died to end habeas corpus and protect torture.
In a nutshell: they died to make the world a far worse, far more despicable, and far more dangerous place. And they did so knowing exactly what they were doing.
Rather than show any respect for veterans, we should use this day to remember those who do deserve to be remembered: those who have been slaughtered by the troops, those whose lives have been permanently destroyed by the troops, those who refused to serve, those who deserted the troops in times of battle, and those who betrayed their own country in times of war.
Now that's a memorial day I could get behind.
Benjamin,
After reading your comment, there is hardly anything else to say, except how sorry I/everyone feels for the real caring US citizen, if there are any left except commentators on this site.
Regarding US military casualties in Afghanistan:
to the end of May 2009 (61) Dead
to almost end of May 2010 (141) Dead
In anybodys tally ,thats 135% up in 2010 from 2009. And 2009 was well up from from 2008 and so on.
Anyone connecting the dots here?
More than 1000 dead, but just wait. Our military promises we will stay – and we know there will be more.
How many dead per star on the good General's shoulders?
Just read in the Pakistan newswire that seven more US troops were KIA in a chopper shoot down in Kandahar's Zhari district on Saturday. Happy memorial day.
The city of Irvine is constructing the *first and only*
monument to Perpetual Wars (Iraq, Af/Pak/Yemen)
due to be completed in Aug 2010.
It has space for 8000 names. When it fills up, it will be updated yearly.
Seriously.
Publicize this atrocity.
….
Glass empires shouldn’t fly drones
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