BS: How many killed in Afghanistan?

Subject: BS: How many killed in Afghanistan?
From: Kampervan
Date: 11 Jul 09 - 04:26 AM

Here in the U.K. we are kept informed of the number of British soldiers who are killed. But how many soldiers from the other countries fighting alongside the U.S. and The U.K.have been killed?

Also, are there any figures for the number of civilian dead? Does the general population in Afghanistan want our troops in their country?

Are they helping or obstructing?

It seems to me that we are being given very limited information as to what is going on out there.

Subject: RE: BS: How many killed in Afghanistan?
From: Stringsinger
Date: 11 Jul 09 - 11:22 AM

Far too many. The U.S. is engaged in war crimes. Obama has let us down.

Subject: RE: BS: How many killed in Afghanistan?
From: Royston
Date: 11 Jul 09 - 11:54 AM

I don't know about the numbers of dead. We are getting the definite impression from news sources and from the open and public complaints by leading military figures, that our troops are poorly equipped and supported by the politicians. That is inexcusable.

Afghanistan is a strategically important territory. It was ever thus. The world (UK included) have been fighting either directly or by proxy in Afghanistan for hundreds of years whilst the ordinary civilian population repeatedly pays the usual price in deprivation and death.

Since the USA and Russia fought a proxy-war in the 1980's in which the CIA funded and armed Osama bin Laden and the Taleban (was there ever better proof of the saying "As ye sow...") the civilian population have lived under the boot of a pseudo-religious terrorist mob that wanted to drag the society back 1,400 years to a theocratic agrarian society. Basically they were Khmer Rouge in turbans. Bin Laden operated his terrorist network from Kabul and we know where that led us.

So we have no choice but to deal with this for our own self-preservation (ignoring the fact that it is all of our own making anyway) Give them Afghanistand and then Pakistan is next and then the mullahs have nuclear weapons.

That aside, the people of Afghanistan are like people everywhere. We are all the same. We worry about health, jobs, providing for our children and for our old-age, having a safe society. So yes, they want an end to the taleban and their retrograde views towards society and towards the status of women, art, culture.

But this is where things get strained. Having travelled in war-zones, I can tell you that after a while people will tolerate almost anything if it means that their families might continue just to live.

So as much as they would like the Taleban replaced with elected uncorrupt leaders, schools for women and so on, these aspirations are secondary to staying alive. Security and safety is all that matters and if it starts to seem that we cannot stamp out the Taleban and deliver that security then we will not carry people with us. In an attempt to eek out some sort of life, folk will sacrifice "higher ideals" and acquiesce. And that would be tragedy for us and for them.

Iraq was a reckless and ignorant sideshow by a dangerously stupid Texan oil spiv and his slavering, fellating side-kick (Bush / Blair). Both of them should be in front of an international court for all the innocent lives that they are directly responsible for ending.

Afghanistan, I think, is the real-deal. This is the genuine clash of right and wrong, reason over religious terror, civilisation over stone-age anarchy. It's one that we must not lose!

What I know,or believe, about the views of the people comes from extensive work in the region (Southern Iran, Pakistan) and from working last year on security issues with a healthcare NGO in Afghanistan. That organisation were involved in some very interesting and revealing healthcare outreach, particularly for women, that says a lot about the shared experiences and concerns of ordinary people. I came to know the country-director for Afghanistan and others in-country.

Subject: RE: BS: How many killed in Afghanistan?
From: Emma B
Date: 11 Jul 09 - 12:21 PM

RORY Stewart has been a soldier, diplomat and academic and has travelled extensively in Afghanistan and Iraq.
His first book, The Places in Between, a New York Times bestseller, was an account of a walk across Afghanistan in the winter of 2001/2. In 2005, he founded an NGO in Afghanistan and moved to Kabul. He is Ryan Family Professor of the Practice of Human Rights and the director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the John F Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Yeterday an article of his was published under the heading
"Afghanistan: a war we cannot win "

"Obama and Brown rely on a hypnotising language that can – and perhaps will – be applied as easily to Somalia or Yemen as Afghanistan.
It misleads us in several respects: minimising differences between cultures, exaggerating our fears, aggrandising our ambitions, inflating a sense of moral obligations and power, and confusing our goals. All these attitudes are aspects of a single worldview and create an almost irresistible illusion.

It conjures nightmares of "failed states" and "global extremism", offers the remedies of "state-building" and "counter-insurgency", and promises a final dream of "legitimate, accountable governance". It papers over the weakness of the international community: our lack of knowledge, power and legitimacy. It conceals the conflicts between our interests: between giving aid to Afghans and killing terrorists. It assumes that Afghanistan is predictable. It makes our policy seem a moral obligation, makes failure unacceptable, and alternatives inconceivable.

It does this so well that a more moderate, minimalist approach becomes almost impossible to articulate."

depressing reading

Subject: RE: BS: How many killed in Afghanistan?
From: Peace
Date: 11 Jul 09 - 12:49 PM

"There have been 1,211 coalition deaths -- 721 Americans, 10 Australians, 175 Britons, 122 Canadians, three Czech, 24 Danes, 19 Dutch, four Estonians, one Finn, 26 French, 30 Germans, two Hungarians, 13 Italians, three Latvian, one Lithuanian, three NATO/ISAF, four Norwegians, nine Poles, two Portuguese, 11 Romanians, one South Korean, 25 Spaniards, two Swedes -- in the war on terror as of July 7, 2009, according to a CNN count. Below are the names of the soldiers, Marines, airmen and sailors whose deaths have been reported by their country's governments. The troops died in support of the U.S.-led Operation Enduring Freedom or were part of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan. At least 3,023 U.S. personnel have been wounded in action, according to the Pentagon."

That's as of July 2, 2009

Subject: RE: BS: How many killed in Afghanistan?
From: Royston
Date: 11 Jul 09 - 12:57 PM

The Stewart article is a very learned analysis of all the problems and pitfalls associated with trying to "do something" in Afghanistan. It makes some of my points but is indeed very depressing.

The thing is that Stewart has no idea what should be done. He only sees problems and offers no solution.

He says that we should reduce troops from 90,000 to 20,000 and we could still try to do humanitarian work to help Afghans. Bollocks. Every time we build a water or power project now, the Taleban blow it up. Reducing troops cannot help anyone. The country would be so unstable that humanitarian aid would be totally impossible to deliver.

The only suggestion that emerges from between Stewart's lines is the one that he dare not write - That we pull out, secure the border with enough military hardware to keep the population locked inside with the Taleban drug-dealing tyrants and try to forget about what might be happening. That we should effectively be concentration camp guards.

And he implicitly proposes this for Sudan, Somalia, North Korea et al. I don't like that sort of murderous pessimism.

Subject: RE: BS: How many killed in Afghanistan?
From: gnu
Date: 11 Jul 09 - 01:10 PM

But... it's a great place to battle train troops and field test weapons. Practice makes perfect.

Subject: RE: BS: How many killed in Afghanistan?
From: Emma B
Date: 11 Jul 09 - 01:13 PM

17 February 2009

The number of civilians killed in the conflict in Afghanistan rose 39% last year, the United Nations says.

Militants were to blame for 55% of the 2,118 civilian deaths, while US, Nato and Afghan forces were responsible for 39%, according to the UN report.

Civilian casualties have increased despite repeated pledges by US-led forces to reduce civilian deaths.

The UN report into civilian deaths said the death toll in 2008 civilian was "the highest of any year" since the Taleban were ousted in 2001.

In one of the most-publicised incidents, US troops fighting off a Taleban ambush last November bombed a wedding party in the Shah Wali Kot area in southern Afghanistan, killing about 40 civilians - mainly women and children.

The issue of civilian deaths at the hands of foreign troops is a hugely sensitive issue, says the BBC's Martin Patience, in Kabul, and is something that the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, has raised repeatedly.

BBC News

There are no official figures of civilian deaths caused by the invasion.

From late 2001 up to now, there have been numerous incidents of civilians killed in military operations against Taliban and Al-Qaida fighters.

A list of these giving the number of civilian casualties may be found at Wikipedia

Subject: RE: BS: How many killed in Afghanistan?
From: gnu
Date: 11 Jul 09 - 01:19 PM

"Civillians". My personal peeve are the accolades for Canuck snipers making the longest kill shots ever recorded. Very impressive, indeed. But, when you blow apart a person at the distance they have, how do you know it was a ruthless and dangerous enemy?

Subject: RE: BS: How many killed in Afghanistan?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 11 Jul 09 - 02:51 PM

Oh, you just assume it was, and then "everybody's happy".

I think Obama is making a serious error in trying to win a war in Afghanistan, but he probably felt he couldn't win the election withouth pursuing such a policy...and now feels committed to it.

I do not believe Afghanistan poses any real threat to the security of the USA...but only to its own people. It's the USA, as usual, which poses a real threat to someone's security in this picture.

What the forces fighting in Afghanistan want is the same thing they've always wanted: local power on their own turf and no foreign presence in Afghanistan.

Subject: RE: BS: How many killed in Afghanistan?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 11 Jul 09 - 03:06 PM

Afghanistan is a strategically important territory.

It has often enough been regarded and treated as such - but is it really any truer of Afghanistan other than many other places?

Basically it seems to me that right now the truth about the Afghan war is best expressed by the old soldiers chant "We're here because we're here because we're here..."(continue ad infinitum)

Someday the foreign soldiers will be pulled out, because of domestic politics back home, and within a couple of years whatever they leave behind in the way of a government will collapse, and the new power structure will be largely made up of the people who have been fighting on the other side. Whether that's going to happen a couple of years away, a decade or so, or half a century or more, the outcome is going to be essentially the same.

Subject: RE: BS: How many killed in Afghanistan?
From: pdq
Date: 11 Jul 09 - 03:42 PM

"I do not believe Afghanistan poses any real threat to the security of the USA..."

Also, it is repeatedly said that a the U.S. cannot respond militarily unless directy attacked.

Neither is true.

We are obligated to fight an attack or invasion of any country in OAS (over 30) or NATO (nearly 30).

We also have a moral obligation to stop atrocities (see Somalia and Rhwanda) or aggression (see Kuwait).

We follow democratic process before engaging in military action (see United Nations and Congressional resoutions). Easy to find on WWW. They are written in plain English, too.

Subject: RE: BS: How many killed in Afghanistan?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 11 Jul 09 - 04:06 PM

Fine. :-) But I still do not believe Afghanistan is any real threat to the USA, nor do I believe the Taliban government had any part in planning or orchestrating the 911 attacks on the USA. I doubt that the Afghan government was aware of any of the plans for that attack, and I doubt they would have supported it in any way...as it could only bring massive retaliation back on them if they did.

Did Al Queda have some bases in Afghanistan at the time? Yes, I figure so, and they also had them in several other places. None of those places, as a nation or a government, was responsible for the 911 attacks. Matter of fact, they may well have been planned by people much closer to home than you think...

The countries your government intervenes in, pdq...those interventions are not made on the basis of some high moral priniciples. They are made on the basis of pragmatism. Political pragmatism. Financial pragmatism. Control of strategic regions, trade routes, and resources. That is why great empires intervene in the affairs of smaller nations. They always claim moral reasons, but they do it for material reasons and to extend their power and control. (sort of the same reasons why a tiger or a wolf pack try to extend their territory...it's the instinctive actions of a territorial animal)

All the "moral" reasons that are trotted out by your media...well, that's to get the American public onside to support the war. Some kind of moral argument can always be found...and it may even have some genuine merit...but it's not the real reason behind the war.

Subject: RE: BS: How many killed in Afghanistan?
From: pdq
Date: 11 Jul 09 - 04:22 PM

I am not inclined to argue anymore about Iraq or Afghanistan, but I don't find any mert is saying that the U.S. engaged in military actions that were spurious or unauthorised.

The UN votes were preceeded by open dabate and were shown "in real time" on international television.

Same for the House and Senate debates about Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan.

We saw our Congressional representatives debate and then vote on all these actions. Once actions was decided, all debate should have ended with the participants closing ranks and showing a united front.

Sad to say, the latter did not happen.

Subject: RE: BS: How many killed in Afghanistan?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 11 Jul 09 - 04:31 PM

Well, there are always the necessary formalities, aren't there? One must put clean curtains on the windows and one must whitewash the fence to remain "respectable". Lawyers are handy for that sort of thing. So is money. And power. You can get "authorization" for something if you have enough pull. That will satisfy the tenets of "the law", but it won't necessarily make what you are doing right.

As for closed ranks (between various allies)...well, those often tend to start fracturing apart if things don't go as well as might have been expected. Sometimes a participant will even change sides during a conflict...several of Germany's formerly quite willing European allies declared war on the Germans late on in WWII. They were making a pragmatic decision, based on their own immediate survival interests.

Subject: RE: BS: How many killed in Afghanistan?
From: pdq
Date: 11 Jul 09 - 04:46 PM

Please show film of the Taliban being elected.

Please show the names of partcipents and the vote count when al-Qaeda authorized the Trade Tower attacks.

Please show the UN resolutions that authorised the Taliban to invade and destabilise Pakistan.

Please show the elected Taliban representatives voting to destroy the magnificant Buddhist statues.

We have "transparency" in government that is seldom seen except in a few Western democracies.

Subject: RE: BS: How many killed in Afghanistan?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 11 Jul 09 - 07:03 PM

Those are things that may help explain why there is a war in Afghanistan, pdq - but unless this is a war that can be won they are essentially irrelevant. And to believe this is a war that can be won involves stretching imagination to the snapping point.