Afghanistan - The Fool's Errand Continues

My oldest daughter and her husband - who is still recovering from wounds he received in Afghanistan the week prior to last Thanksgiving - visited last week.   While he was here, my son-in-law drove to Walter Reed Hospital near Washington, D.C., to see a friend and former roommate who had lost both legs to an IED explosion.  Words cannot express my support and concern for our men and women in uniform.  Likewise, words cannot properly describe my contempt for those who sent America nation to war in a fools errand in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Would that these hubris filled bastard could suffer the same grievous wounds that they have brought upon others.  And unfortunately, the needless deaths and injuries continue.  America needs to leave Afghanistan NOW.  The Seattle Times reports on the latest needless American deaths.  Here are highlights:

Militants killed six Americans, including a female diplomat, and an Afghan doctor Saturday in a pair of attacks in Afghanistan. It was the deadliest day for the United States in the war in eight months.
The violence — hours after the U.S. military’s top officer arrived for consultations with Afghan and U.S.-led coalition officials — illustrates the instability plaguing the nation as foreign forces work to pull nearly all their combat troops out of the country by the end of 2014.

The attacks came just days after insurgents stormed a courthouse, killing more than 46 people in one of the deadliest attacks of the war, now in its 12th year.

The three U.S. service members, two U.S. civilians and the doctor were killed when the group was struck by an explosion while traveling south to donate books to students in a new school in Qalat, the provincial capital of Zabul province, officials and the State Department said.

Officials said the explosion occurred just as a coalition convoy drove past a caravan of vehicles carrying the governor of Zabul province to the same school event. It is unclear whether the attack was aimed at the coalition forces or the governor.

Another U.S. civilian was killed in a separate insurgent attack in eastern Afghanistan, the U.S. military said in a statement.

It was the deadliest day for Americans since Aug. 16, when seven U.S. service members were killed in two attacks in Kandahar province, the birthplace of the Taliban insurgency. Six were killed when their helicopter was shot down by insurgents and one soldier died in a roadside bomb explosion.
Violence in Afghanistan is expected to pick up in the coming weeks and months, as the warm weather spreads. Further, as the NATO troops who have secured the country for the past decade pack up and leave at the end of 2014, the Taliban are expected to intensify efforts to destabilize the Afghan security forces, who are taking over the battle.

The next time you hear some bombastic politician claiming to "support our troops," ask him or her whether they supported the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars.  If they say "yes," they need to be called out as liars in so far as they claim to support our troops.  You do not send out young men and women out on an unwinnable fool's errand and get off claiming that you support the.