Afghanistan, by the numbers

--Number of American soldiers in Afghanistan: 88,000

--Number of American soldier casualties in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars: 4,454. At least 1,828 killed in Afghanistan alone as of this past Tuesday, according to the Defense Department.

--Suicides among active-duty soldiers in the US Army more than doubled from June, in July.

--26 active-duty Army soldiers killed themselves in July, compared with 12 in June.

--The July total was the highest for any month since the Army began reporting suicides by month in 2009.

--For the first seven months of 2012, the Army recorded 116 suicides among active-duty soldiers. If that pace were maintained through December the year's total would approach 200, compared with 167 for all of 2011.

That's all.

That's enough.

It's disgusting.

Links: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/16/army-suicides_n_1792372.html

What is it good for?

Links: https://www.facebook.com/WarCosts#!/WarCosts; http://www.bravenewfoundation.org/2011/10/blog/the-myth-of-military-contracting/

Why?

After writing a bit yesterday on America and the Vietnam War, I was reminded, too, of a book on the subject.

The book was "America's Longest War: United States and Vietnam", 1950-1975 by George Herring (Nov 1985).

And that really set me back.

Vietnam.

America's longest war.

And here we are, still in Iraq after 6 years.

Fortunately for the soldiers and for America, the human toll hasn't been nearly as bad, of course, but does this make any sense?

Does it make any sense for us to still be in Iraq?

Does it make any sense at all for us to still be committing men, women and materiel to this far-flung, sand-blown outpost?

If you've read anything by me at all, you'll know my answer would have to be a resounding no.

But my point in bringing this up is that, here is this book from so long ago on Vietnam, calling it our longest war and the average American on the street today really doesn't seem to have any big feeling, one way or another, about our country being in Iraq.

Soldiers are over there, living and dying for our country and most of us are just concerned about our jobs, our bank accounts and how the weather is going to be in the next 24 hours.

That's not right, to say the least.

The previous leadership from the White House got us into this stupid, deadly, costly war and then didn't lead the American people.

Thank all that's good that he's gone.

Now, let's do all the right things and get out of Iraq and the Middle East.
________________________

Within an hour or two after writing the above, a news article came out from Associated Press and Yahoo! News telling of an alarming rise in January this year, in the number of suicides by American Soldiers.

A year ago it was bad enough at 8. This year it was a shocking 24.

Clearly, this seems to point out exactly what I was saying.

Why are we in Iraq?

And why don't we get out?

Link to full story here:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090205/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/army_suicides