US Military 2013 Losses in the War in Afghanistan
 

On the first day of snow here, (as in, two days ago) I went along to a Orthodontist appointment of my brother's. I sat in the waiting room and flipped through this month's People Magazine. (To be fair, Jennifer Lawrence was on the cover so there's nothing wrong with that)

At the end, they had several pages where they honored all of the US Servicepeople killed in Afganistan all year.

There was 123 of them.

I got to thinking. If we ever got into a REAL war...one where we'd lose that many or more in one battle....

How would society react to something like that? Everybody would lose their minds!

I'm not saying that the number should be greater. It would be best if we had left A-stan years ago after Bin Laden and saved, let's say, 150 per year since then. That's 450 people counting this year. IMHO, there is no way you can just change what has been done for thousands of years. Why are we wasting resources and lives trying anymore?

Anyway, I just thought it was interesting that the number was so low considering how big of a deal it is when a soldier dies. You would think it would be a higher number. Just the media at work I guess. I'm glad that there are people out there that care though. It makes me so mad whenever I see somebody dissing the troops and using choice words/phrases to curse them. We've all seen those kinds of posts...

If you won't stand behind them, feel free to stand in front of them.

I thought it was a nice little memorial. Had all of the names and ages of the people and had pictures of all the servicewomen lost. It's sad that a lot of them had to die so young....but I think it's even worse when you see the name of somebody over 35....somebody with a family at home.*

To those that paid the price this last year, a salute.

:salute: :salute: :salute:


*not to say the younger ones didn't.

In a major war, especially where the enemy would be clear and the survival of the nation would be at stake, the public would be more acceptable to higher losses.

Especially now, when Bin Laden was neutralized by one SEAL team without losses, when an entire invasion 10 years before failed to do so.

The US have lost over 2,000 personnel in total....there is a breakdown by year and month in the link below:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_...in_Afghanistan

The price paid by all of the countries with personnel there is already far too high and the quicker everyone comes home the better.

No, they would not. Not necessarily I mean. It always depends what they fight and die for. See WWII. A very good reason to fight, wasn't it? And now look at Vietnam, or Afghanistan and Iraq... somehow the mood quickly shifts, right?
At least that is how I feel about these conflicts.
When I hear about German losses in Astan, it mostly ruins my day. Because they all die for nothing good at all. But that is kinda OT atm I guess.

What is often forgotten is that about 3,000 French civilians were killed on D-Day alone by shore and air bombardment. About the same as the number of Allied servicemen deaths. More French civilians died under Allied bombs than British civilians during the Blitz – about 70,000. I think when we in America wonder why Europe is adverse to military adventures abroad, it's because they lived through their own liberation, and consequently had a much less rosy view of it. That's not to say they were ungrateful to be free from Nazi rule, but that they recognize it came at a steep price from all sides in people and infrastructure.

We tend to think that high causalities were an accepted norm in WW2, but even then negative public reaction had to be dealt with if you weren't a totalitarian police state. Certainly, the biggest tipping point in Truman's decision to use the atomic bombs were the 12,000 US dead on Okinawa. Politicians here recognized that home front morale was becoming more brittle with every expensive step toward Japan. The Japanese themselves were banking on it.

I wonder how many Afghan civilians have died?

R.I.P. All the troops and civilians who have died in Afghanistan.

Very hard to find a reliable figure but looking at a range of internet sights a conservative figure would be in the region of 20,000.

I just wonder if our country would even unite against an enemy anymore.

With the way we are, I'm not sure if I want hipsters and gangsters defending me. That's saying they would go.

Idk. I guess something would have to happen to know for sure.


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Afghanistan is the wrong place for us to be. We need to stay out. Let them fight amongst themselves. Until there's an actual reason, (Iran and Israel get into it...) we should just quit trying. We have our own oil. We can sustain ourselves with oil from Canada and South America.

That's the one thing you need. A common enemy that is an actual enemy.
If you can raise 5 million USD I can invade you in a week :)

How easy it is for one to generalise a population for their viewpoints. :O: A Hispter or a gangster could make just a good a soldier as any other man, heck for some gangbangers it might well be the only way out of the circle of violence of the streets for them. If one of them with a gun is the only thing between you and a horrible death then you will be glad of them no matter what race, sex or ideological viewpoint they hold. Remember, many conscientious objectors in the First World War would wade through the mud in the frontlines to carry back wounded soldiers from no-mans land as they acted as medical orderlies.

In regards to US opinion on war, it would depend a lot on how long the war lasted and how much it effected the mainland. Aside from periodic terrorist attacks and the one that started it all on 9/11, the 'War on Terror' (which is the worst designation for a war ever) hasn't really touched American soil, and in fact since the Civil War the American mainland has remained relatively untouched, the odd Japanese raid or balloon here and there, but nothing at all like the destruction that fell upon the whole of Europe during the Second World War. If a war happened that devastated American cities, killed thousands of American people, you bet that America would be right behind that war, in a manner similar to how public opinion was initially behind the invasion of Afghanistan. It's not too difficult to get public opinion behind a war when you've already been attacked, but maintaining it in the face of a lack of progress is difficult, and it will be very disheartening for all involved in Afghanistan when the final withdrawal takes place and the Karzai government lasts as long as a Furby in a microwave. Already in Iraq we're seeing the nation split into two and the creation of a new Al'Qaeda state in the Al'Qaeda controlled areas of Iraq and Syria, so it's a real kick in the teeth to have blood spilled for seemingly no real return, sure Saddam is gone, mission accomplished there, but what is going to replace him may lead to the old story of 'better the devil you know'.

Would the American public support a war on Iran...honestly I doubt it, even if Iran attacked Israel I think that public opinion would be extremely split between pro and anti-Israel sentiments, and most people would see a war on Iran as being a fruitless endeavour...which is partially true to be honest, because the only way you're going to completely stop Iran from developing its nuclear program is to get boots on the ground, air attacks just won't hack it, and I would be extremely surprised if the American public would support a boots on the ground war with Iran.

I don't want an army of square-jawed, lock-step automatons who obey every order without compunction defending me either. At the end of the day every Army is a reflection of the nation that sends it into battle.

I guess we could always go back to conscription. That was popular. :D

Well shoot. Ran out of that several trillion dollars ago. How about an IOU?

+1 :hmmm:

I just have so little faith in our population...I know there'd still be a group of people (maybe like....California, Florida, etc :O: ) protesting the war no matter what happened.

Iran might not have been a good example....but how about Russia?

Or some Asian aggressor? :hmm2:

Would it take another Pearl Harbor to unite the country?

Seems like the US Military is getting softer though....with all the political correctness. That's what I'm basically getting at. "Nobody can be offended and whatever you do, it's okay" kind of society really makes me mad.

If we get into it with an Asian country, we just might have to.

Oh, definitely, even in the depths of World War II there were protests against it, both in your country and in mine. The most amusing of which was the socialist ones who were fiercely anti-war right up until Operation Barbarossa and then, strangely enough, they became very pro-war. :har:
Then there's the isolationist movement, popular in America both pre and post war, and I don't think that Charles Lindbergh would be a modern day Californian. :03:

Russia...or China for that matter is a difficult one, because of their nuclear arsenal, no one would want mutually assured destruction, and you have to look at the peace protests throughout the west (and no doubt there would have been the same in the east if they had been permitted or publicised) during the Cold War, but certainly a Pearl Harbor style attack would inflame public opinion to the point of support in general, but not fully because that would be impossible, after all to this day there are people who argue that both Pearl and 9/11 were inside jobs, but that's another topic of worms entirely.
If one were to look at the general public reaction in American on the 10th September 2001, it was almost overwhelmingly in favour of not only invading Afghanistan but erasing it from the map, shock is very quickly replaced by anger, and with that wave of anger over a decade of long and bloody occupation began. Of course, waves of emotion swiftly break upon the cold hard wall of reality, and that reality has pushed the American public, when they are reminded of the war, into a fierce anti-war stance, and not just the American public but most of the nations that were involved in Iraq and Afghanistan, you only have to look at the recent events in Syria and the general opinion in Europe and America about taking military action against Assads regime. Once bitten, twice shy, as the saying goes.
So, a Pearl Harbor style event would certainly inflame public opinion in support of a war, but it wouldn't last long. Imagine what the American public would have been like if Operation Olympic had gone ahead? If the Japanese hadn't surrendered and the Allied forces had been forced to fight mile after bloody mile into Japan. I think that public support for total surrender would have started to wane and with the Soviet Union looking hungrily across the Sakhalin straits the US may have been forced into a position that it didn't want to take.

Oberon, you raise an interesting question.
Exactly how long does a furby last in a microwave?

About less than five minutes according to the scientific experiments conducted by 'Is it a good idea to microwave this?' :hmmm:

Well with conscription there would not be much choice.Even without plenty a draft of people from different walks of life enlist voluntarily in the military and I can assure you that there are booth hipsters and former gang members in the military right now along with rednecks,surfers,dweebs,nerds,hunters and what ever else you can think of.To judge a person on the style they choose as teenager is a silly way to judge their actual potential.


Also not to knock you but you have no idea how you will actually react in a combat situation until you really face one.You may think you'll handle it fine but until you are really there you cant know.

I am not really sure what you mean by "real" war either.I see people say this and it really irks me.Trust me if you where in a front line unit in Afghanistan you most certainly would not be saying that.If very high casualties is a hallmark of a "real" war then WWII would not be a real war either because most nations experienced less casualties in WWI than during WWII.

Technology changes how wars are fought technology also means that medical science can improve survival rates drastically which means a reduction in casualties.

To be honest I doubt that a conventional war on the scale of WWII is likely to occur again the economic costs are so high that a losing nation(any of the nations truly capable of a global war) would simply use their nuclear weapons to "level the playing field" assuming that they just did make their opening move.

Another thing to consider during WWII every nation had very strict regulations in place in regards to what was made public.Sure people knew a little of what was happening but it was strictly controlled even in the US even with all of that people where tiring of the war by 1945.Hell one of the first times they showed publicly what happened at Tarawa in November 1943 many people where upset by that which was pretty much the first time that the entire nation learned the full details of a battle.The full extent of the loses and damage done at Pearl Harbor was not made public during the war and even what was known drove much of the west coast into a panicked state for a few weeks.

What does oil have to do with this? Troops didn't go to Afghanistan for oil, they went because a bunch of crazies killed thousands of Americans. Oil had nothing to do with it. The whole purpose of going there was to kill Osama Bin Laden and train the Afghan military.

And I'm not sure that leaving is the right choice. I doubt that the Afghan military will be able to effectively fight Al Qaeda and the Taliban. And if Al Qaeda establishes an even stronger power base in Afghanistan, they might launch even more attacks on the US. Time will tell.

Well, actually troops went for the same reason troops go anywhere, because they were told to, and they were told to go Afghanistan for a multitude of reasons, only a handful of which have actually been accomplished. Certainly though, if access to cheap oil was the chief war goal of Iraq and Afghanistan, they really went about it the wrong way, after all blowing up the Middle East doesn't usually drive oil prices down...but some people would have you believe that that is why it happened in the first place. However, that is, again, a whole can of worms for another topic (the conspiracy bin perhaps).

To be perfectly honest though, the invasion of Afghanistan was an emotional reflex, America got punched in the face and it needed to punch back just as hard, drone and airstrikes would not do, it would have to be a big show of force, 'shock and awe' as I believe the phrase of the time was. It needed to be shown to the world that you don't mess with America, sate the bloodlust of the people. I think there would have been a massive outcry in America if Afghanistan wasn't invaded to be honest.
Was it the right idea to put boots on the ground? Well, it would have been harder to track and destroy all Taliban forces without it, admittedly, you can only see so much from the air, and back in 2001 drone warfare was only just coming online. So if you wanted to destroy the Taliban for refusing to give up Osama (although to be honest I doubt even they knew where he was) then you'd need to get down and dirty to do it.

It was a no-win situation really, no matter what Bush did he would still lose. If he didn't invade and decided to hunt Osama down using the US Special forces and intelligence networks then he would get absolutely lambasted by the US public and media for not reacting in a strong manner to 9/11. If he just ordered airstrikes on Afghanistan then he would get lambasted for not doing enough (after all, airstrikes were what Iraq was getting from time to time and they hadn't killed 3000 US citizens) and if he invaded Afghanistan then he would get caught in the same quagmire that ensnared the British and Soviets before them.

Iraq on the other hand... :nope:

That is true... With a draft, it won't matter....but I don't think Congress has the balls to do that again.

:yep: Never said they'd be bad fighters.

I define a real war as one where we fight a clear enemy and reason to be there.

World War Two was one such war. World War One...eh...maybe. Vietnam started as a fight against communism....but ended up like Iraq and Afghanistan. The last few we've been in don't seem too helpful.

I don't like the idea of an all drone military.

Our media now is terrible. They'd just criticize whatever we do no matter how morally right or wrong it is.

There are a lot of people that say all the fighting in the mideast is raising oil prices.

I, personally, believe that this is a sad excuse by the oil companies to get an extra dollar from us.

Leaving Afghanistan would leave the Afghans by themselves, yes....but the country has been there thousands of years and all they have ever done is fight. You can't expect them just to give it up for Democracy in a period of 10 years.

If we were going to stay, we might as well Annex the place. We've been there so long...

I just don't think we're doing much good anymore.

Lot of people give Bush a bad rep for this....I don't.

I'd like to see those other people make that decision and then face the nation.

Iraq was stupid. We should've finished that in 1991. Like Korea, we should've finished them in 53.

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Maybe all the world leaders need to get together and play Hearts of Iron. :rotfl2:

Well we have not faced a situation since Vietnam that required a draft.If the need for bodies was high enough they would re-instate the draft.


Yes you did read the second sentence in post #8.If you do not trust them to defend you and they are in the context of your statement in the military helping defend then you are saying that they would be bad fighters or that they would be inept in some other way that would make you not trust them.

Where it is effective to do so I have no problem with drones doing things where they can fulfill a role especially a hazardous role that otherwise means putting someone at risk.

Which is why during WWII the government exercised strict control they have done it before if they ever felt the need they will do it again.

The reason the cost of oil has gone up is because the demand over the past roughly 20 years has risen sharply.25 years ago only the upper class in China drove a car today nearly every middle class Chinese family has a car same goes for India.On top of this the demand for oil in developed nations remains high.

38% of oil sold in the US comes from the US and we import more oil from Latin America and Canada than we do from Saudi Arabia and Canada is the number one importer of crude oil to the US.That being said the oil market is tied together which is why the prices are higher.

Food for thought the reason Italy invaded North Africa during WWII was to gain control of the vast oil reserves. Of course they sucked and the Germans came and helped but the goal all along was to get to Egypt and then the middle east.Germany invaded the Soviet Union for its resources especially its vast oil reserves.The allied nations where defending these resources from the Axis.

Japan invaded China for its resources and they invaded the Dutch East Indies for the oil reserves there.That oil was so well refined naturally that it could be loaded right onto tankers at some points and was ready for use.

My point? Even what you define as a real or just war in the end was fought over resources.That still means that your nation looses even if it seems as if you are fighting for nothing because they still take your land your home your means to have an effective economy.Even before we developed complex civilizations we defended our resources and if need be took the land of weaker group and their resources.