The Betrayl of Our Troops Continues - Another Death in America's Longest and Needless War

While politicians in Washington fight over spending, the squandering of money and American lives continues unabated in Afghanistan.  One recent squandered life was that of 25 year old David J.Chambers of Hampton, Virginia (pictured at right).  Chambers was killed by an IED similar to that which severely injured my son-in-law two months ago also in Afghanistan.  Here's what the Virginia Pilot reported:

A soldier from Hampton has been killed while serving in Afghanistan.  Sgt. David J. Chambers, 25, died Wednesday in the Panjwai District of Kandahar Province, the Department of Defense said. He sustained injuries in a mortar attack while on dismounted patrol.

Chambers was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 38th Infantry Regiment, 4th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division. That is under control of the 7th Infantry Division at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in the state of Washington.

Like my son-in-law, Chambers was based out of Fort Lewis and was a member of the Stryker Brigade.   And like so many others who have been sacrificed for nothing meaningful in Afghanistan, Chambers was ultimately sacrificed on the altar of American military and political hubris. Rather than call the Afghanistan War for what it is, namely a fool's errand from the start, the military brass continues to lie and pretend that we are "making progress" and asks for more time, soldiers and, of course money.  A piece in American Prospect looks at the disaster known as the Afghanistan War.  Here are highlights:

In October 2001, George W. Bush told the country he was sending the American military to Afghanistan in order to "bring justice to our enemies." It's safe to say support for the war would not have been as nearly unanimous as it was had he said, "Oh, and by the way, our troops are going to be fighting there for the next 13 years."

Last spring, Afghanistan passed Vietnam (measured by the time between the Gulf of Tonkin resolution in 1964 and the departure of the last Americans from Saigon in 1975) to become America's longest war.

To date, we've spent over half a trillion dollars in Afghanistan, a figure that includes only the direct yearly costs for both military expenditures and civilian aid. It doesn't include the cost of replacing materiel and weapons used in Afghanistan, nor the long-term costs of caring for the thousands of servicemembers who were wounded there. Those factors will add hundreds of billions of dollars to the tally in the years to come. And today, keeping a single servicemember in Afghanistan costs upward of a million dollars per year.

Last August, the number of Americans killed in Afghanistan passed 2,000.

If politicians really believed in "supporting the troops" we would have left Afghanistan years ago.  They give lip service to the concept for political sound bite purposes, yet in fact they betray our troops every single day.