I had just finished the harrowing account of just how we got Bin Laden in the New Yorker— including a Navy Seal who tackled two people he had reason to believe had suicide bomb vests on to save the rest of his team–when I got the first report of our largest single day death toll in the wars that have dragged for near a decade now. The New York Times reports:
In Afghanistan, insurgents shot down a Chinook transport helicopter on Saturday, killing 30 Americans, including some Navy Seal commandos from the unit that killed Osama bin Laden, as well as 8 Afghans, American and Afghan officials said.
The helicopter, on a night-raid mission in the Tangi Valley of Wardak Province, to the west of Kabul, was most likely brought down by a rocket-propelled grenade, one coalition official said.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, and they could hardly have found a more valuable target: American officials said that 22 of the dead were Navy Seal commandos, including members of Seal Team 6. Other commandos from that team conducted the raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan, that killed Bin Laden in May. The officials said that those who were killed Saturday were not involved in the Pakistan mission.
Saturday’s attack came during a surge of violence that has accompanied the beginning of a drawdown of American and NATO troops, and it showed how deeply entrenched the insurgency remains.
In all the discussion of the debt ceiling, did anyone discuss the role that our costly wars have played in driving up the deficit? Noble prize winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz has put the true price of our wars at well beyond $3 trillon, when considering not just the direct costs but the impact on the U.S. economy and the cost of caring for the men and woman who have served in these wars after they come home.
But even beyond the numbers, how about the human cost of these wars? I personally went from cheering the amazing courage of the guys dropping into a Pakistan compound, despite having to crash land their helicopter to find Bin Laden–to realizing the utter futility of what we are doing there when men from the very same unit got shot out of the sky yesterday on yet another mission to try to weed out the bad guys.
Perhaps we are engaged in a war on terror that will determine the very future existence of the United States as we know it. Perhaps the attempt, despite looking futile at times, to install democratic institutions in Iraq and the largely illiterate and desperately poor Afghanistan is the only way to preserve American freedom.
But if that is the case, why are our very bravest men still getting shot out of the sky? And why is our country’s debt being downgraded at least in part because of the financial cost of embarking on the wars on terror in the Middle East?
I am a firm believer that the men we ask to fight these wars are heroes–especially those who die and those who come home permanently damaged–and should be treated as such. I am really beginning to wonder, however, about the President who sent us there in the first place and the one who doubled down in Afghanistan.
Haven’t enough good men died already? Isn’t the massive structure employment in our own country (according to Paul Krugman, another Noble prize wining economist, the percentage of the population currently employed currently stands at a very dangerously low 58.2%) that has caused millions to be permanently without work a bigger threat to our national security than terrorism in the near term?
As the massacre in Norway showed us, terrorism is just as likely to come from within as from outside. As our country continues to slide into economic disarray marked by increased despair, we should take a closer look at what might happen within.
–photo Michael Kamber
Firstly I do not want to disrespect any who has had loved ones lost to the ‘war on terror’ or to those maimed, injured and I do not question the courage and bravery of the men on the ground however, they did sign up for the service and therefore become tools of Government to carry out foreign policy. I do strongly disagree with the conflict in Afghanistan and the Iraq war and the pretext to these wars, 9/11 ( that’s a whole subject in it’s self ) As for Bin Laden, he was the required “‘bogey man”.Was he not killed… Read more »
Good men are still dying in Afghanistan because for more than thirty years the US has pursued a misguided foreign policy in the Middle East. Our support of Israel, fueled by the effective lobbying efforts of AIPAC and the neo-cons, has done immeasurable harm to this country. The US has endured decades of “the war on terror” because of our unilateral support of Israel. George Washington warned in his farewell address to the nation that becoming too close to any one nation would make their enemies become our enemies. And that is exactly what has happened. We’ve become too close… Read more »
Hundreds of thousands of civilians have been killed in these disgusting bloodbaths. They were wrong from day one. Nation-building is a joke and a lie.
When it comes down to it, economic interest is the exact reason, and from a realism perspective, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. There are many layers to this war, security being one of them, but economic interests is another, and as a liberal, Democrat and Soldier, I am fine with that.
It’s sort of like people who say that the war in Iraq was about oil – which is not true, but if it were, so what?
Please. Give me some credit for having a brain in my head. Much of American foreign policy is carried out in defense of “freedom,” but I think it is completely naive to think that American military policy is only about freedom and nothing else. There are plenty of American servicemen and women who are there because of ideological reasons. They see themselves as fighting for freedom. I don’t doubt their sincerity. But, that doesn’t mean that the government that sends them there is only thinking about freedom. Just because elected leaders, unelected leaders, and an echoing media throw the word… Read more »
AnonMale
you put it plain and simple and I agree
if I may add, we go to war:
1. because our leaders crave glory ( like Artila, Gangis, Julias , )
2 our leaders greed the ‘oil’ (or money or raw materials or farmlands..)
3 our people felt dull and our leader thought to give them some exictments (sort of Gladiatorings)
very naive thoughts, but I wonder how much truth in it
I will never pretend to know what it might be like to be there in the trenches, serving, and protecting. I also don’t see that wide a gap in the debate here. All of us want our troops back home, safe and sound with their children and being rewarded on the home front as they should be for their service. I can only assume the brave men and women in the field would choose that as well. At some point it becomes a debate over the logic of it all. If the troops are fighting our freedoms, then logic says… Read more »
I am not trying to inflame anyone, nor am I going out of my way to offend anyone, but the devil’s advocate in me can’t help but notice the broad patriotic strokes being used here. Realistically, I cannot assume every man engaged in a profession, no matter how beloved a profession that is, is a “good man.” I can maybe give men in some jobs the benefit of the doubt more than in other jobs, but this conflation bothers me a little bit. I find the blind “support your troops” sentiment in American media to be overly sentimental and simple-minded.… Read more »
P.S. The chaplain who shot up Fort Hood a year or so ago was wearing a uniform. I refuse to give him support or thank him for his service. No excuses just for wearing a stars and stripes velcroed to your shoulder.
Let’s not forget Naomi Klein’s statements that there are approximately 70-100 “contractors” in the war torn arenas for each and every soldier. Who are we supporting, by supporting the troops ? Also, I have often wondered if the mental health services that should be a right to our service people were freely available, and easy to actually receive, if events similar to fort Hood could have been avoided. A less informed person said to me that a large number of untreated (because of a lack of resources) PTSD suffering veterans, with the right to bear arms could be the biggest… Read more »
Major Hassan was not a chaplain.
Mr. Matlack,
Enjoy your cozy warm bed and the knowledge that your children are safe and sleeping soundly. They will go to private schools and enjoy their trust fund.
We will die to keep it that way.
You will never understand.
As an American Soldier currently in Afghanistan, feminist and Democrat, I believe in these wars we’re fighting. While the cost for both wars are high, and the cost of human lives even higher, these costs are both worth the fight because America and its allies both depend on us winning these wars. While the far-left will point to the loss of human lives as a reason to end the war, and the far-right will use fear-mongering tactics of Islamophobia and defending America’s freedoms to support the war, the truth is that wars are politics by other means, and these wars… Read more »
Thank you for your service Marc. Your heroism, and the men and woman like you, is beyond reproach. I respect what you are saying and that you have far more information than I do to say it. I have not been there and seen these wars in person. I did, however, just arrive home from Africa last night where there is massive starvation and mistreatment of women. I just wonder how we choose to save the people, the women, of Afganistan and let the people, the women, of Africa starve? One could certainly make the argument that a fraction of… Read more »
Ron I am not diminishing what the men in combat do and have done. In fact one could argue I am obsessed with it given how much I write about it. My point is that as a country we have to make tough choices about our resources and efforts and I question whether the war on terror, and the massive investment of dollars and human beings, hasn’t itself tanked our economy, put us in debt, and distracted our leaders from the bigger threat from structural unemployment, growing wealth disparity, and the justified dispair and anger that is increasingly fostering. If… Read more »
Tom is on the button pointing to military expenditures as what should be the core of our country’s budget talks as we reassess what we can afford, not afford, and what we can borrow to do now but must pay for later. We killed our enemy with intelligence and courageous men. It’s time to bring the other brave men home. Our security is not now at risk, and arguably never was. We have spent a decade making war on shepherds and goatherds in Iraq, hanged Saddam long ago, though we never found weapons of mass destruction. Iraq is not a… Read more »
These good men are a part of something larger than themselves which is what being a hero requires. I don’t think you can make a clear connection between the acts of individuals in combats zones to the United State’s economy. It diminishes one and confuses the other.
From the outside it seems USA has lost it’s way. How did a great country sink this low? These brave men are risking/have risked their lives while their employers can’t even decide if they deserve a wage. Shocking!