50,000 American Casualties in Afghanistan, Iraq and War on Terror
Tuesday, April 26, 2011 at 1:36PM Tom Hayden http://tomhayden.com/home/50000-american-casualties-in-afghanistan-iraq.html
U.S. Troop Casualties from Oct. 7, 2011 through Apr. 26, 2011. All data courtesy DoD.Some day soon, the number of American dead and wounded in Afghanistan and Iraq will surpass the 50,000 mark. As of today, that total is 49,182.
5,998 American troops have died.
43,184 American troops have been officially wounded.
An additional 54,592 have required medical evacuation out of combat theaters Operations Enduring Freedom, Iraqi Freedom, and New Dawn.
The result, a sum total 103,774 U.S. troops—a conservative minimum not including: the walking wounded; those suffering from traumatic brain injury; attempted or successful suicides; or civilian contractors—are casualties of these long wars.
Following the military’s surge in Afghanistan, American casualty rates have significantly worsened. 610 of the 1,546 U.S. troop fatalities have occurred since 2009, along with 6,260 of the 11,110 total wounded during the same time frame.
Article originally appeared on tomhayden.com (http://tomhayden.com/).
NOTES
Reader Comments (2)
Tom: I received an email from a military families group couple of weeks ago. They sent a statement from Veterans Affairs claiming 73,000 men DIED just in Iraq, and the Pentagon refused to actually list those casualties because the number would be even greater than the 54,000 (?) dead from Vietnam. I will try to find that document and send to you. My dear friends son just arrived at Dover AFB, he was in Afganistan. This young 22 yr will never walk or be able to feed himself again. He was in a roadside blast which caused the truck to overturn and rolled down an embankment. Five of the others died, except for Rusty….who wishes he had. This good looking kid so full of life joined up and asked to go to Afganistan (cuz thats where the terrorists came from). He has stories no one would believe. He says, the Afganis cant read or write, they are all addicted to heroin and they cannot be trained. When they get up in the morning they dont eat, or put their “gear on”, and have to be prodded out of their tents. Some runaway. The smell of drugs permeates the whole camp. The US soldiers realize they were scammed by our government, many want out, but they cant get out. We must end this illegal war of choice and bring these kids home. If Obama and his right wing neo con cabinent, and this unmerciful, military industrial complex arent reigned in….thousands more will die…and no one knows why? Why are we there? Obama is permitting his foreign policy to be run by neo cons…Biden, Clinton, Petraus, Panetta et al…are no better than Bush. Thanks for your time.
Speak4 Truth
General Dwight D. Eisenhower warned about the Industrial Military Complex in the 1950’s, and nobody listened. The IMC is “The Government within the Government ” running this country. Remember Presidents and staffers come and go but the money people in the IMC are their for life.
President Bush and his side kick Dick Cheney pulled off the greatest coverup of their business operations in US history, by declaring Energy Policy a matter of National Security. No one can discuss the real truth about Afghanistan & Iraq and the media was instructed to stay clear as well.
Afghanistan = The TAPI pipeline, a 42″ high pressure gas main from the Caspian Sea to the waiting Plastics Industry in South east Asia. Nothing more nothing less. The truth about 911 is in the pipeline deals beginning with the Clinton Administration. When you send special Ops forces into Afghanistan to kill Taliban members who renege on a business deal and get attacked in return what do you expect ?
Iraq is just as sick. Karl Rove said “We had to stop Saddam because he was manipulating the oil Market “. That’s right he was selling oil cheaper than the Saudis, getting back at George Sr. for Desert Storm. Saddam was hitting them right in their pocketbook and they couldn’t stand it. Why do you think the Saudis met with George Herbert Walker Bush at ‘Walker Point’ in Maine before the Iraq invasion ? It sure wasn’t for tea !
These SOB’s disgust me. My heart goes out to all the poor mothers and fathers that lost their children in these wars.
They were lied to and told that our Freedom depended on it. Biggest line of CRAP ever put against the American people.
We have our FREEDOM. The troops only function is to protect the contractors and engineers involved in the ‘Silk Road’ Pipeline known as the TAPI Pipeline. Guaranteeing it’s safety was a pre requisite to for funding by the World Bank and others. UNOCAL now hides behind a consortium of Gas & Oil companies participating in the venture. The plight of Iraq hangs in the balance. The competition has been eliminated, Saddam is dead and now the world will pay dearly for oil.
Eslkevin's Blog 
Prison Break in Kandahar Blows Hole in Pentagon Propaganda
Tuesday, April 26, 2011 at 11:43AM
Map of Kandahar, Afghanistan.For more than one year, the Pentagon has been soliciting favorable public relations from the mainstream media and think tanks over its military surge in Kandahar. All that PR went down the Rabbit Hole this week as nearly 500 Taliban prisoners escaped through a tunnel dug under Kandahar’s prison.
The White House, Congress and media should seize the opportunity to examine the stream of propaganda emanating for months about the U.S. success in “the spiritual homeland of the Taliban,” and whether they have been manipulated in a “psy-ops” campaign to promote a favorable image of the surge. [Hastings, Michael. “Another Runaway General,” Rolling Stone, February 23, 2011]
An Afghan policemen inspects the tunnel opening at the main prison in Kandahar, Afghanistan, which prisoners escaped through on Apr. 25, 2011. (Photo: Allauddin Khan / AP Photo)The escape is the second since 2008, when 1,200 Taliban prisoners were liberated in an attack on the same prison. Since 2008, the U.S. has deployed an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan, more than half to southern Taliban strongholds in Kandahar and Helmand provinces.
The truth appears to be that the U.S. war has gone from bad to worse. The prison escape is not only a huge psychological boost for the Taliban, but frees hundreds of fighters for the “spring offensive” now underway. It also blows a hole in any U.S. claims of having secured the province. And it suggests that the Afghan security forces, on whom U.S. policy depends, were directly engaged leaving cell doors open and leading the detainees into the tunnel.
A December 2011 survey of Afghan residents in Kandahar and Helmand showed 79 percent demanding the withdrawal of foreign troops by this summer or earlier. Three-quarters of Afghans in the same poll supported negotiations with the Taliban, and two-thirds favored Taliban leaders holding political office. The poll of Kandahar and Helmand residents offered “a rare dose of hopefulness,” according to the Washington Post. [December 6, 2010]
Obama’s Decisions on Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan Will Determine Re-Election Chances
Wednesday, April 27, 2011 at 8:19AM
This article originally appeared at The Nation on April 26, 2011.
The president is on the cusp of a decision which will define his presidency and re-election chances in 2012: whether to risk multiple military quagmires or campaign on a decisive pledge to pull American troops out of Afghanistan and Pakistan and drones out of Pakistan and Libya.
Centrist that he is, President Obama may gamble on a promise to “stay the course.” Sound familiar? All that is known is that the decisions will come quickly.
On Afghanistan, Obama told the Associated Press last Friday that his coming July announcement of troop withdrawals would be “significant…not a token gesture.”
Though the president offered no specific numbers, the phrasing was an important signal, delivered in White House–speak. According to Bob Woodward’s book Obama’s Wars, the internal debate between the White House and Pentagon over Afghanistan has been intense. When the president announced in a December 2009 West Point speech that he was sending 30-33,000 more American troops in a military surge to Afghanistan, it appeared that the Pentagon and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had won the argument. But Obama slipped a hedge into the West Point speech pledging that he would “begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July 2011.”
What did it mean to “begin” a transfer? When would it end? Would it be based on conditions on the ground, as demanded by the military, or a firm deadline, which Obama expected would come from the Hill? Peace groups, opposed to Obama’s troop surge of 33,000, weren’t impressed by vague talk of simply beginning something that had no end. The cynicism deepened when Obama announced in November 2010 that American combat operations would end by 2014, and that counterterrorism capabilities would remain beyond that date.
Pentagon officials, including Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Gen. David Petraeus, have publicly advocated the most minimal version of an initial withdrawal. In a recent speech to NATO recently, Gates chastised the Europeans for “too much talk about exit and not enough about continuing the fight.” He added that “we will not sacrifice the significant gains made to date, or the lives lost, for a political gesture.” Woodward’s book quoted Petraeus saying “I don’t think you win this war. I think you keep fighting.”
Obama’s concern was being dragged into an unpopular, unaffordable quagmire by generals with competing agendas. As Woodward quoted him, “I can’t lose all the Democratic Party.”
But that is what’s happened. Peace sentiment, expressed openly in the streets during the Bush years, became a silent but expanding presence inside the Democratic Party as Obama escalated the war. Recent polls indicate that a majority of Americans, including 86 percent of Democratic voters, favor speeding up the withdrawal of American troops.
In February, the Barbara Lee, the sole Congressional opponent of the open-ended authorization to go to war a decade ago, found herself in the mainstream of her party in opposing Afghanistan. Lee submitted a resolution to the Democratic National Committee calling on Obama to announce a “significant” and “substantial” withdrawal by July, a rapid pullout over the next two years and the transfer of the savings to job creation at home.
Since Obama is the leader of the DNC, all resolutions are vetted by the White House. At first, the Lee language was rejected by the staffers who monitor the doings of the party. Then something happened. White House objections disappeared. Centrist party leaders like Donna Brazille and Alice Germond signed on as co-authors of the Lee resolution, which passed without dissent.
Was the White House sending a signal that a strong peace statement from the party would be useful political cover? No one knows. Then came last week’s announcement by Obama echoing the DNC resolution’s call for a swift, sizeable and significant reduction.
So what would those terms mean in raw numbers? At the low end of “significant,” Obama could announce a withdrawal of 33,000 beginning in July and carrying through 2012, enabling him to claim he ended the surge he promised his military. That still would leave many Americans in confusion, wondering how a 2009 level of US combat would mean a step towards peace.
A more robust definition of “significant” would be a decrease of 32,000 troops by October of this year, followed by another decrease of 35,000 by July 2012, a reduction of more than half of America’s forces through the 2012 presidential campaign. These numbers are proposed by national security experts at the Washington, DC–based Afghanistan Study Group. The ASG estimates $60-80 billion in savings to American taxpayers per year.
That still would leave some 30,000 Americans in Afghanistan through 2014 focused on training Afghan troops, checking the expansion of Taliban control and engaging in counterterrorism operations against Al Qaeda cells. In 2014, an Afghanistan election will choose a successor to Hamid Karzai. The US secret war in Pakistan would continue on its own dynamic. Politically, the total numbers of American troops, dead and wounded, might plummet, winning the approval of Americans at home.
In Iraq, Obama made a surprising commitment to withdraw all American troops by December of this year, a pledge that has been derided by military commanders and national security insiders. The game, it is suggested, is to induce the Baghdad government to “invite” the United States to stay past the December deadline. Obama remains a sphinx as to his ultimate intentions, but a serious obstacle to delaying the withdrawal is posed by Moktada al-Sadr, with a powerful bloc in the Iraqi parliament, armed militias in the wings and supporters in Iran possessing great influence. On the other side, Saudi Arabia is strongly opposed to a US total withdrawal, which would leave Iraq in the Shiite orbit dominated by Iran.
Sadly, American public opinion is shaped by American casualties, which means the peace movement has little influence over Obama’s decision concerning Iraq. Peace sentiment was highest in the years 2003–07, when 3,899 American soldiers were being killed and 28,890 wounded in Iraq. Since then the death toll has dropped from 903 in 2007, to 313 in 2008, to 148 in 2009, sixty in 2010, and fourteen as of early this April. The American public has zero interest in Iraq, although that might change if Obama’s leaves a small contingent of US troops in the midst of sectarian violence in violation of his previous pledge.
In Pakistan, Obama is waging an increasingly chaotic war using Predator drones and large numbers of CIA and Special Forces. The diplomatic solution would be a cease-fire in Afghanistan and all-party talks including power-sharing with Pakistan’s allies, the Taliban and other insurgent networks. This course seems to be supported by the Karzai government in Kabul and by a few in the US administration, but the agenda of the Pentagon seems to be imposing a settlement by military force. Nothing, even the escape of 400-500 Taliban prisoners from a jail in US-occupied Kandahar province this week, will force the Pentagon to retreat. Only a commander-in-chief can do that, and the Pentagon is betting that Obama won’t be willing.
In Libya, the situation remains murky, but there are two possibilities. First, Obama can follow the advice of those like Senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham, who tried to defeat him in 2008, and slide down the rabbit hole into another war. Obama could get lucky if the Qaddafi regime suddenly collapses, although the following occupation would be expensive and explosive. Or, like other unpopular dictators, Qaddafi might get lucky and draw the Western powers into a stalemated quagmire and negotiated settlement, endangering Obama’s re-election. At the moment, Obama is gambling that several more weeks of pressure will cause Qaddafi’s implosion, allowing the president to declare his first military “victory,” despite the fact that the American coalition in the Long War against “terrorism” is falling apart. One month ago, for example, Qaddafi’s Libya was celebrated officially as a pillar of the “war on terror,” as were Egypt and Yemen.
There is a great danger that the Obama administration will be knee-deep in the Big Muddy by next year, as Pete Seeger used to phrase it. The chance to campaign in 2012 on a platform of ending two trillion-dollar wars at a time of economic recession should be attractive, especially to a president who has lost his liberal base. But cutting compromises with the Pentagon and Republicans may leave Obama right where his opposition wants him, floundering in the center of quagmires he has created.
Read also Katrina vanden Heuvel’s colum in the Washington Post,
NATO military deaths involved in Afghanistan are now ready to pass 5000 this month.
http://icasualties.org/oef/
IT IS SAD TO KNOW THAT SO MANY PEOPLE ARE DYING FOR THE GREEDY CONTROLOING ONES AT THE TOP OF THE PYRAMID. THESE SOLDIERS ARE BRAINWASHED INTO KILLING EACH OTHER.. THEY WILL ALL MEET THE SAME ENDING UNLESS THEY WAKE UP AND REALIZE THEY ARE BEING FED WITH LIES AND DECIET.
PEACE.
I will pray for you and your community. Ignorance, lies and bad thinking are causing a lot of issues and pain.
i leave in a very far village of afghanistan. and afghans might have killed thousands of American or western soldiers.
we should remember one thing, that the afghans fight that does not mean they fight bcuz of their ignorance and foolishness or they are addicted to Drugs.
Becuz their Religion is Attacked
they fight becuz, their home is occupied.
they fight becuz, thousands of their innocent Brothers and A number of their sisters are ghost prisoners behind the bars in Jails.
Becuz Humen rights have been Bitten Behind those bars.
Because an innocet voice wails and the voices come out of the Cages.
I am really sorry but i want to write the facts that we see in the ground:
Afghans will fight until the end.
i know this is a very heavy sentence. as many youngster lives would be lost. mother would lose their DEAR ONES.
children would become ORPHANS and cities would be wiped out of the MAP of the world.
we will continue fighting becuz we dont have any other option.
they, the americans, canadians, britishers ETC want us to pick up our weapons and fight
I will pray for you and that we stop wasting money on violence.
http://icasualties.org/oef/