For many years, this and other blogs have criticized President Barack Obama and Democratic leaders for their failure to pull out of Afghanistan after his election. There was clearly an unwillingness to risk the political costs of being blamed for a withdrawal or a perceived defeat. As a result, our personnel were left in harm’s way, even as the country’s president called us “demons”, our allies denied basic rights to woman and religious minorities, and polls showed intense anti-American sentiments. Hundreds of billions were spent to provide political cover for leaders who needed to show that they were tough on terror. Of course, many were made millionaires off the war while others paid the price on the ground. Roughly 75 percent of the fallen were from working class families. Now, a study by a conservative organization has shown that 73 percent of all U.S. Afghan War casualties have occurred since Jan. 20, 2009 when Obama was inaugurated. While another site shows slightly different numbers, the result is the same: most of the deaths have occurred under Obama (a fact that is seldom reported)
There have been 91 U.S. casualties in Afghanistan just in 2013. You can compare that to the 30 and 31 troops killed in 2002 and 2003. This is the result of Congress giving Bush a blank check on September 14, 2001. While leaders like Hillary Clinton and John Kerry agreed to the language, many at the time objected to the resolution as a transparent effort to avoid accountability for an actual declaration of war as required by the Constitution. Instead of showing leadership, they approved a resolution authorizing the president “to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons.” Once started, none of them had the courage to demand that it end while lobbyists continues the streaming of billions into the pocket of contractors. By last count, 2,144 U.S. military personnel have killed in the war and 1,575 of those occurred under Obama.
There are differences between the numbers of the conservative site and icasualties.org, though the difference still shows a vast majority of deaths occurring with Obama. Here are the CNS statistics:
Total U.S. Combat Deaths in Afghanistan
2001: 5
2002: 30
2003: 31
2004: 49
2005: 94
2006: 87
2007: 111
2008: 151
2009: 303
2010: 497
2011: 494
2012: 294
2013: 91 (From Jan. 1, 2013 to Sept. 10, 2013)
Here are the statistics from icasualties.org:
Year US UK Other Total
2001 12 0 0 12
2002 49 3 18 70
2003 48 0 10 58
2004 52 1 7 60
2005 99 1 31 131
2006 98 39 54 191
2007 117 42 73 232
2008 155 51 89 295
2009 317 108 96 521
2010 499 103 109 711
2011 418 46 102 566
2012 310 44 48 402
2013 97 6 20 123
Total 2271 444 657 3372
Jill, Please do give us a few more words about your worries regarding Congress and “all that work left to do”.
Silly me. I rather thought it might have something to do with a budget and potential debt ceiling default.
I await your usual 5000 words to set me straight.
We sat in hooches in Vietnam waiting to go out on night ambush, from which several guys would die, while Nixon had Kissinger stall the Paris Peace Talks so that Nixon’s helicopter buddies’ contracts could be finished and paid. Nothing changes no matter what party is in control. Once the federal checks cleared the helicpoter accounts, they decided what shape of table they needed and the war was over. But the names that financed the chopper contracts did get a nice place on a wall.
Seamus,
you shouldn’t have outed yourself. Now that the “truth” is out, you will be hounded by liberal propagandists trying to get you to stop all fracking.
You’re groovy too, Gene.
LOL
You are a scoundrel, seamus. Maybe even a puckish rogue. And I really dig that about you.
SON OF THUNDER (Thunder…thunder…thunder (echoes for several more seconds)
“@seamus – “Because Obama” – nicely done YouTube piece by one of the ex-communist, richest oil-men, polluters, and climate change deniers in USA. Their Washington GOP lobbyists (i.e. KochPAC) is responsible for this act of vapid sarcasm that the “low-effort-thinkers” (i.e. see Dr. Scott Edleson http://tinyurl.com/kdh76qn) will buy hook line and sinker as “reality”.
Like you Seamus?”
You caught me. I am one of the richest oil men in the country, and a devout climate-change denier. And, though I am often vapid, I try to avoid being vapid and sarcastic at the same time. I was hoping that the “Second City” logo at the beginning of the video I posted would trick a whole short-bus full of rubes into getting a quick perverted giggle. I’m going to have to tell the boys down in the propaganda lab to work harder. So, you know, nice work outing me.
Guilty As Charged
David H. “Seamus” Koch, Esq.
There’s a reason for this …
With Iraq winding down and the troops pulling out of there, there were less targets of opportunity for IEDs etc. against our troops
Big ” Al” …. Al Qaeda, that is, shifted their focus to Afghanistan ….
So sonofthunder, why keep excusing Obama? Why worry if it had been McCain? Same actions, different lackey. Get busy with the truth and standing up to what is wrong.
Obama supporters never do that. They either look the other way or actively support him no matter what atrocity he’s committing for the day. If you really believe the president, either McCain or Obama is in control then don’t act like you believe it. Oppose their actions! Speak up, speak out. No justifications, just say this is wrong and I oppose this war mongering.
So how does bias play in the number of deaths per year?
So glad it’s been clarified how the Prez’ behavior is excused because Bush is still running the show (to boil down the proprez political rant to shield the prez from righteous criticism).
David Sirota ‏@davidsirota 44m
Good point: Obama didnt plan Syria turn of events, but his willingness to be flexible is a welcome change from Bush http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/09/no-obama-didnt-plan-syrian-inspections-he-did-something-better …interesting tweet from David Sirota
@Jill – Unfortunately you are right. It’s like how Blouise asked me about the “invisible hand” controlling Mr. Obama. I’d have to venture a guess: GEORGE SOROS. Now who controls GEORGE? AIPAC? Who controls AIPAC? Go ahead a finish my sentence… 🙂
Gene H – I have some stuff in the spam-filter. Can you give it a whack please? Like Peter Stormare did in Armageddon (1998) 🙂
So true, it’s all Bush’s fault. Obama asked for a surge of troops after his election, but that’s because Bush asked him to. Then he asked for another surge in Afghanistan, but that one was requested by Saudi Arabia. In Iraq, it’s actually true that Bush got us out (at least our official military) because Obama wanted to keep going but the Iraqis wouldn’t go for it. Finally, Libya was done at the request of the Israel, as is Syria, (along with the Arab States who have offered to pay him to earn even more of that peace prize than ever before). Yesterday, Obama was threatening Iran again, but I’m sure he can’t possibly be responsible, because it’s Obama, and I love him so much, that whatever he does is O.K. with me and/or someone else made him do it!
“Ah yes… Pat Buchanan… my favorite NAZI!” – channeling WC FIELDS
Well Mr. Obama WAS a Muslim once when he was a teenager. He renounced it while in Indonesia. He is now a Church of Christ Protestant Christian. Regarding their claim of SOCIALISM: Well that just shows that they must be high-school drop-outs as they do not understand the difference between SOCIALISM and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE for which their very own parents and grandparents use today!
The ONLY openly Socialist politician we have in USA is Bernard “Bernie” Sanders (I-VT). Mr. Obama is a DEMOCRAT – I’m just saying… I know you know this already.
BTW you can call me SOTB. 🙂
BTW – I did say that little moron in DKRP would do something incredibly stupid and he did recently… I guess Dennis Rodman better cancel his SECOND trip to DKRP:
http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/12/world/asia/north-korea-nuclear-reactor/
@seamus – “Because Obama” – nicely done YouTube piece by one of the ex-communist, richest oil-men, polluters, and climate change deniers in USA. Their Washington GOP lobbyists (i.e. KochPAC) is responsible for this act of vapid sarcasm that the “low-effort-thinkers” (i.e. see Dr. Scott Edleson http://tinyurl.com/kdh76qn) will buy hook line and sinker as “reality”.
Like you Seamus?
Yes WWIV (counting the cold war as #III) was an option, if we were to take “Russian-retaliation” from Mr. Putin’s NYTimes piece yesterday. And the presence of his two warships Nastoichivy and Moskva (not counting the Akula loitering there). And the PRC has it’s Yaun and Jin-class subs and the Jinggangshan loitering in the eastern Med too.
However, Mr. Obama probably never intended to carry it out. He probably just wanted to shake a few Syrian trees and see what falls out. Evidently the battle is “buster” (aborted) now. Assad will comply. However, the real guilty parties so scot-free as usual. I just hope nobody foes FUBAR and farts. I sure hate to see this happen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmhuQqPcOtY
This was LIBYA getting it’s arse kicked to hell by Tomahawks!
I’m no Obama supporter, but this kind of stands to reason. Bush occupied Afghanistan, but didn’t commit a serious troop presence to the conflict. It’s part of why Osama bin Laden got away.
In 2008, while we had 160,000 troops in Iraq, we only had around 35,000 in Afghanistan. In 2003, we had 70,000 troops in Iraq, but only 10,000 in Afghanistan.
Kind of shows you where Bush’s priorities were. The War on Terror isn’t about saving American lives. It’s about maintaining Cold War economic policies.
Holy Crap, now we’re really in trouble: “The president spoke at the White House before a meeting with cabinet members:
“Even as we have been spending a lot of time on the Syria issue and making sure that international attention is focused on the horrible tragedy that occurred there, it is still important to recognize that we’ve got a lot more stuff to do here in this government,” Obama said.