The Stars & Stripes reports that, even though Americans have stopped paying attention, there’s still a war going on.
More than a decade since the U.S. launched Operation Enduring Freedom on Oct. 7, 2001, there are still 54,000 American troops in Afghanistan. That is more, by far, than at any time during the first seven years of the war, yet these days, they garner scant news coverage. Most recently, Syria’s civil war and the use of chemical weapons as well as the federal government shutdown have buried Afghanistan news, even as Americans continue to die — four were killed within a week in so-called insider attacks just at the end of September.
“There is a bloody war happening, and no one is talking about it,” said Ahmad Majidyar, an Afghanistan expert at the American Enterprise Institute and a frequent adviser to the U.S. Army.
The U.S. role is diminishing and casualties among members of the U.S.-led international coalition are down as the Afghan security forces take over more of the fighting. But Americans are still fighting — and dying.
Yeah, well, who can expect us to know all of that without Code Pink stomping their angry little feet in front of the White House daily? Code pink is more concerned with helping Iran build their nuclear program and wiping out Israel than any war their President is fighting. IVAW, the anti-war group who complained daily about the war in Iraq and then shifted focus to Afghanistan when they started being irrelevant when Iraq left the front page are now more worried about Syria and poor little traitor Chelsea Manning than the 102 soldiers who lost their lives in Afghanistan this year.
Public ambivalence about Afghanistan stems in part from the failures of the past few years, which, despite the surge of foreign troops, saw a sharp rise in casualties; violence remained above the pre-surge levels after the additional forces left, Smith said.
“The short attention span of the West is such that if the problem hasn’t been solved by now, maybe they figure it’s unsolvable, which is too bad because I think what Afghanistan needs right now is continued engagement,” [Graeme Smith] said. “In a lot of ways, a lot of Afghanistan’s future depends on whether Western nations feel guilty enough about the mess they made to stay involved.”
Yeah, well, “the failures of the last few years” happened because before the surge in Afghanistan even began, this administration was making plans to withdraw. The President wouldn’t give the generals the number of troops they asked for, despite CIA and DoD predictions that what is happening would happen, and now because the president’s compromise staffing has failed the country, failed the troops who served in Afghanistan, he doesn’t want to talk about, the pliant media follows suit, and it all falls off the national radar.
“The mess they made” can be laid at the feet of this Administration and it’s failure to make any commitment to destroying our enemies. A scant few months ago, we were told that al Qaeda has been “decimated”, yet we see evidence of the fact 13 years hasn’t even put a dent in their activities. We were told that the drone program has limited them, but the last few weekends have been full of news of al Qaeda.
It’s war as a campaign platform, with a real cost in lives and national security that doesn’t seem to matter to anyone. It’s a serious lack of leadership.
