Grim milestone reached in Afghanistan US troop deaths reach 1,000 since the war began in 2001

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN—The United States incurred 1,000 US troop deaths when a suicide car bomber rammed into a NATO convey. Commander of U.S. and NATO forces, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, said about the Afghan war, “nobody is winning” in a Newshour interview on PBS.

In a nutshell, the war is in a stalemate, as the Taliban has been regaining ground since the end of 2008 and counterinsurgency groups have risen with it. More perturbing is Hamid Karzai’s corruption and until just recently, no pressure has been brought to bear by the administration—that has begun to change since the two failed terror bombings in the US—and of course, its poppy production continues.

Afghanistan is a sorted affair, there is no real functioning government, only a post-warlord ruled geography with an uneducated, unskilled, and poverty stricken population that is subject to the whims of the Taliban seesaw—a population that does not seek to be liberated because history has taught them nothing else.

And therein lays the fundamental problem as General McChrystal sees it, “Our success is very dependent upon the [Afghan] people believing in the future. What they have to believe is that the government we are working towards is better than what an alternative would be."

-- Killswitch Politick

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