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From BBC news

A checkpoint shooting in eastern Afghanistan has taken the US military's death toll in the war past 2,000.

A US soldier and contractor were killed while three Afghan soldiers died and several were injured.

The new deaths occurred on Saturday in Wardak province.

The international mission, Isaf, initially said the soldier was believed to have been killed by a member of the Afghan security services, but it later said the circumstances were unclear.

What is known is that a firefight took place, after what Isaf described as a short conversation between coalition and Afghan soldiers, says the BBC's Quentin Sommerville in Kabul.

Isaf says "insurgent fire" may have been involved in the incident, which is now under investigation by a joint Afghan and coalition team, adds our correspondent.

The American death toll goes back to the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

Sunday's incident took place at a checkpoint near an Afghan National Army base in the district of Sayedabad, according to Afghan officials.

Shahidullah Shahid, a provincial government spokesman, earlier told the Associated Press news agency that an Afghan soldier had turned his gun on Americans and started shooting.

"Initial reports indicate that a misunderstanding happened between Afghan army soldiers and American soldiers," he said.

But Isaf later said an American soldier and an American contractor, along with three Afghan soldiers, were killed in an exchange of fire in confusing circumstances that may have involved insurgent activity.

Isaf's deputy commander, Lt Gen Adrian Bradshaw, said: "The circumstances were somewhat confused and we are establishing the full facts to the extent that it is possible."

Military officials from both sides have launched a joint investigation.

Two thousand dead

The figure of 2,000 deaths was given by US officials on Sunday. During the war in Iraq, 4,409 American soldiers were killed.

As of 27 September, the Pentagon's official military death toll for Afghanistan had stood at 1,996.

The count includes both soldiers killed in action and soldiers who died of their injuries in hospital. The figure also covers 339 non-combat deaths.

A report by the Brookings Institution estimates that 40.2% of US deaths were caused by improvised explosive devices and 30.3% by gun attacks.

Officially, at least 17,644 US soldiers have been wounded in action in Afghanistan.

The independent organisation iCasualties estimates a higher US death toll, recording 2,125 to date.

This same source reports 1,066 deaths of non-US members of the coalition in Afghanistan. Since the war began, 433 British soldiers have been killed.

It is more difficult to establish the Afghan toll in the war but most estimates calculate a minimum of 20,000 civilian deaths, AP notes.

Some 10,000 members of the Afghan security forces have been killed. No reliable figures exist for deaths among the Taliban and other insurgents.

Nato combat troops are set to withdraw by the end of 2014, but a central plank of the strategy is that foreign soldiers will serve alongside and train Afghans for many years to come.

Correspondents say that may not be realistic given the ever increasing number of Afghans who turn their weapons on their foreign allies.

And?

It would be good to contribute something more than just a question.

Is this supposed to be one of those "let's take a long, introspective looks at the last eleven years of war, and how it's affected us" sort of things?

All death is terrible. However, 2000 deaths over 11 years of fighting, or occupation, whatever you want to call it, is by no means horrendous. Millions of Soldiers and Marines have cycled in and out of there since it began. We should be thankful that it's as low as it is, and that we're on our way out.

I follow a page on facebook that sends out a little blurb for every Marine killed in combat, daily. Some days there's none, and some days there might be three or four. It's an eye opener. When you see their (maybe) smiling face, in their blues with the flag behind them, and think about how easily that was taken away from them, you come a little closer to understanding the loss, and numbers like these mean almost nothing.

It would probably be good to actually post somethign other then just a quote as well.


Seems little more then spam tbh. Thus my question as to what the OP's angle is for posting it? What aspect of it does he want to highlight/discuss/refute?

If I want to simply read BBC news text I can go to their site...

 CT GAMER wrote:
It would probably be good to actually post somethign other then just a quote as well.


Seems little more then spam tbh. Thus my question as to what the OP's angle is for posting it? What aspect of it does he want to highlight/discuss/refute?

If I want to simply read BBC news text I can go to their site...

I usually don't post anything but a quote as a first post. That way it clears the air and we can talk about an article, instead of the ops opinion.

 d-usa wrote:

 CT GAMER wrote:
It would probably be good to actually post somethign other then just a quote as well.


Seems little more then spam tbh. Thus my question as to what the OP's angle is for posting it? What aspect of it does he want to highlight/discuss/refute?

If I want to simply read BBC news text I can go to their site...

I usually don't post anything but a quote as a first post. That way it clears the air and we can talk about an article, instead of the ops opinion.

I don't know I sort of like it when the OP suggests a course of conversation to get the thread rolling. I find thats threads that just post the news stories don't last as long and arn't as interesting.

Plus after the first page people seldom adress the OP's opening statement anymore anyway.


Anyway...

Every untimely death is of course a tragedy, but ultimately I think the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have (in a weird way) been good for our military (not really our country since it's been massively expensive).

These wars have given us a taste of what the 21st century battlefield will look like. It really forced the pentagon to rethink their approach to war. While it is true that no enemy can stand up the US in a straight up fight it is also true that few will even bother to do so. They will instead use the same guerrilla tactics that the Taliban have used in the Middle East. This means that the standard shock and awe approach to warfare isn't nearly as useful as we thought it was.

I think because of these wars the government and the pentagon will be less enthusiastic about resorting to brute force in global conflicts. This is both a good and bad thing (On one hand we won’t jump into another war anytime soon on the other hand… Syria).

I guess what I'm trying to say is that we learned some hard lessons in the middle east but I think those lessons will serve us well in the decades to come and I guess we're lucky that it didn't cost us more lives.

So in the years since 9/11, we have lost 2,000 soldiers in order to avenge the death of the 2,977 victims of the attacks?

 d-usa wrote:
So in the years since 9/11, we have lost 2,000 soldiers in order to avenge the death of the 2,977 victims of the attacks?

And caused, directly or indirectly, the deaths of ~300 thousand civilians, insurgents, or other.

 ShumaGorath wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
So in the years since 9/11, we have lost 2,000 soldiers in order to avenge the death of the 2,977 victims of the attacks?

And caused, directly or indirectly, the deaths of ~300 thousand civilians, insurgents, or other.

I was assuming we were only caring about American lives, sorry.

 d-usa wrote:

 ShumaGorath wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
So in the years since 9/11, we have lost 2,000 soldiers in order to avenge the death of the 2,977 victims of the attacks?

And caused, directly or indirectly, the deaths of ~300 thousand civilians, insurgents, or other.

I was assuming we were only caring about American lives, sorry.

The number wounded is enormously higher than the number killed. They should probably focus more on that, 2k in 11 years makes it one of the least lethal wars America has ever engaged in.

The number wounded is enormously higher than the number killed. They should probably focus more on that, 2k in 11 years makes it one of the least lethal wars America has ever engaged in.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are actually the wars with the highest wounded to dead ratio. Pretty much, if you weren't killed outright, or before they go you to the helicopter you survived. When I was reading the article on it I think it stated that these wars had a wounded to dead ratio of ~94%. Which is ridiculous compared to the other wars fought in modern history.

Such a high survival rate has also put a lot of stress on the medical facilities of the armies involved as well, as it's a lot cheaper and less manpower intensive to repatriate a body than it is to pay disability and therapy for the rest of the vets life.

A Canadian DnD official was actually caught saying that it would be cheaper if the wounded guys died in combat than if they had to care for them afterwards.

This has also led to a really crappy redoing of the rules for wounded vets in Canada. Last I heard they're now doing lump sum payouts rather than actually pay for your disability and health care costs. And the payouts are only in the range of 2-4 hundred thousand dollars too.

 ShumaGorath wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
So in the years since 9/11, we have lost 2,000 soldiers in order to avenge the death of the 2,977 victims of the attacks?

And caused, directly or indirectly, the deaths of ~300 thousand civilians, insurgents, or other.

So, we won?

 Squidmanlolz wrote:

 ShumaGorath wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
So in the years since 9/11, we have lost 2,000 soldiers in order to avenge the death of the 2,977 victims of the attacks?

And caused, directly or indirectly, the deaths of ~300 thousand civilians, insurgents, or other.

So, we won?

Yep, terrorism has been defeated and Iraq and Afghanistan are pro America functioning democracies with good human rights records.

 ShumaGorath wrote:

 Squidmanlolz wrote:

 ShumaGorath wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
So in the years since 9/11, we have lost 2,000 soldiers in order to avenge the death of the 2,977 victims of the attacks?

And caused, directly or indirectly, the deaths of ~300 thousand civilians, insurgents, or other.

So, we won?

Yep, terrorism has been defeated and Iraq and Afghanistan are pro America functioning democracies with good human rights records.

sweet.

Get out. Get out now. Take everyone with us who wants to go but just get the feth out of that hole.

 ShumaGorath wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
So in the years since 9/11, we have lost 2,000 soldiers in order to avenge the death of the 2,977 victims of the attacks?

And caused, directly or indirectly, the deaths of ~300 thousand civilians, insurgents, or other.

So, what you are saying is that we are ahead by 297,033?

On a serious note, I dont wish to sound callous, but 2000 dead soldiers is hardly a big deal for an 11 year war. In fact, the top brass probably view that as a success. If you asked your top generals to give you a ballpark figure for a 12 year occupation and it was 2000-3000, I reckon you would be pretty happy with it. All of the people in the US/UK who claim that the casualites incurred so far prove that "nobody ever beats the Afghans" and we "will never win the war" obviously dont read many books (The Soviets would have mashed them if they were not being assisted by the US), and hugely over estimate how little the establisment thinks of their tools of war (soldiers)

I did two tours out there and several lads from my own company died on my second tour , but Im man enough to admit that the government doesnt really give that much of a gak about individual soldiers as long as the main aim is still in sight. Thats just the way of it. The top brass always seemed far more concerned about accidentally killing civvies than they did about losing a few men, and rightly so when you have a war to win, a war that is so pivotal on winning the hearts and minds of the local civpop.

I certainly dont think this milestone means we should rush out of Afghanistan.

Literally tens of thousands of Afghans are going to be in serious serious gak if we cut and run too early. You could possibly make the argument that we shouldnt have went in the first place (not one I would accept however) but now that we are there, we have a moral obligation to our Afghan allies, and the people of Afghanistan (especially the women!) to stay until the job is done properly.

 mattyrm wrote:

Literally tens of thousands of Afghans are going to be in serious serious gak if we cut and run too early. You could possibly make the argument that we shouldnt have went in the first place (not one I would accept however) but now that we are there, we have a moral obligation to our Afghan allies, and the people of Afghanistan (especially the women!) to stay until the job is done properly.

No. We have a moral obligation to our own citizens. No one else.

If we feel like it we can always pull out all friendlies who want to get out. But do it now. Its not like its going to get better.

So, what you are saying is that we are ahead by 297,033?

Considering four fifths of those, minimum, are civilians... Sure?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Frazzled wrote:

 mattyrm wrote:

Literally tens of thousands of Afghans are going to be in serious serious gak if we cut and run too early. You could possibly make the argument that we shouldnt have went in the first place (not one I would accept however) but now that we are there, we have a moral obligation to our Afghan allies, and the people of Afghanistan (especially the women!) to stay until the job is done properly.

No. We have a moral obligation to our own citizens. No one else.

If we feel like it we can always pull out all friendlies who want to get out. But do it now. Its not like its going to get better.

I don't get how that's a moral obligation. An obligation of duty or honor, maybe, but traditional morals wouldn't broker much difference between one life or another and your arguments are usually pretty amoral or immoral.

 Frazzled wrote:

 mattyrm wrote:

Literally tens of thousands of Afghans are going to be in serious serious gak if we cut and run too early. You could possibly make the argument that we shouldnt have went in the first place (not one I would accept however) but now that we are there, we have a moral obligation to our Afghan allies, and the people of Afghanistan (especially the women!) to stay until the job is done properly.

No. We have a moral obligation to our own citizens. No one else.

If we feel like it we can always pull out all friendlies who want to get out. But do it now. Its not like its going to get better.

I can see your point, Its what Ive always said, Its almost like the people saying we should leave are the ones that should be most passionately arguing for us to stay (Hippies) and the people that are saying we should stay (more right of centre types) should be saying we should leave, I mean, after all, I dont really care that much if loads of Afghans get tortured to death.. but lefty types should.

My feeling though, is that we have volunteer militaries, so our soldiers get paid to take the risks, they can take it.

Its great training too, a few tours of Aghanistan gets you on the ball.. we want our militaries to be filled with grizzled veterans right?

In all honesty, speaking for myself I am ambivalent, I have admitted many times I am a callous fether, I think stay or go its no biggie to me. Soldiers dont mind deploying there, and I was really pleased when we were told we were invading the place! At the same time I really dont care that much about what happens to Afghans.

But, Im sure smarter people than us are pulling the strings.. if they think we can pull out in 2014 then so be it. We can always go back if the ANA/ANP arent up to the job. My point is simply that its not a black and white issue. People who freak out and say gak like "We cant win!" are usually utterly ignorant of affairs out there. You know.. the people that say we only went to Afghanistan for "THE OIL!".

As I said, it takes way more than a few thousand casualties over an 11 year period to beat our military machine.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 ShumaGorath wrote:

So, what you are saying is that we are ahead by 297,033?

Considering four fifths of those, minimum, are civilians... Sure?

Im only yanking your chain.. sadly Its probably more like seven eigths lets have it right. Although, thats not all down to us.

Although... that would be 262,500 civilians so... weve still nailed about 38,000 bad guys!

I probably should have posted a few points to get the debate going, but life got in the way By life I mean my life and not life magazine!

Anyway, how do you measure success in a country such as Afghanistan? It has come to light that those shiny new schools built by the British Army will have to close as the Afghans can't afford the cost. Who would have thought it?
Laptops given to locals (yes really) have been sold on, or handed back due to lack of wi-fi signals. And there was me thinking that it was a tech savvy place. Forgive my sarcasm, but the whole enterprise has been a shambles from start to finish.

 mattyrm wrote:

 ShumaGorath wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
So in the years since 9/11, we have lost 2,000 soldiers in order to avenge the death of the 2,977 victims of the attacks?

And caused, directly or indirectly, the deaths of ~300 thousand civilians, insurgents, or other.

So, what you are saying is that we are ahead by 297,033?

On a serious note, I dont wish to sound callous, but 2000 dead soldiers is hardly a big deal for an 11 year war. In fact, the top brass probably view that as a success. If you asked your top generals to give you a ballpark figure for a 12 year occupation and it was 2000-3000, I reckon you would be pretty happy with it. All of the people in the US/UK who claim that the casualites incurred so far prove that "nobody ever beats the Afghans" and we "will never win the war" obviously dont read many books (The Soviets would have mashed them if they were not being assisted by the US), and hugely over estimate how little the establisment thinks of their tools of war (soldiers)

I did two tours out there and several lads from my own company died on my second tour , but Im man enough to admit that the government doesnt really give that much of a gak about individual soldiers as long as the main aim is still in sight. Thats just the way of it. The top brass always seemed far more concerned about accidentally killing civvies than they did about losing a few men, and rightly so when you have a war to win, a war that is so pivotal on winning the hearts and minds of the local civpop.

I certainly dont think this milestone means we should rush out of Afghanistan.

Literally tens of thousands of Afghans are going to be in serious serious gak if we cut and run too early. You could possibly make the argument that we shouldnt have went in the first place (not one I would accept however) but now that we are there, we have a moral obligation to our Afghan allies, and the people of Afghanistan (especially the women!) to stay until the job is done properly.

As usual, I entirely agree. As much of a mess that it is, the very least we could do for the Afghan people is do the job we said we would do.

It's curious that you mention the bolded part. Never would have thought of that. I'm a bit conflicted, really. On one hand, people are dying for a cause that they personally don't care about or have any moral view on. On the other, people are dying to assure the "mission" of them being there in the first place. It seems like, given the relatively low casualty rate, COs are given a unique position, where they can make decisions that may be detrimental to the fighting force, but very significant towards the eventual goal... Or vice versa.

Your patriotism and pride always bring a smile to my face, and strike me with profound inspiration.

As others have said every death is tragic but the cold math is 2,000 causalties for America's longest war is pretty good actually. Some one day totals in WWII rivalled that.

As others have said every death is tragic but the cold math is 2,000 causalties for America's longest war is pretty good actually. Some one day totals in WWII rivalled that.

D-Day comes to mind, as does operation Cobra, Antietam, Gettysburg, Fredericksburg, and several of their WW1 offensives.

Though as far as I'm aware the Romans still win the contest for most military casualties in a day with Cannae, pegged around 60 thousand plus.

I thought the Battle of the Somme took the cake.I know the British took 60 thousand casualties in a day.

 Ratbarf wrote:

As others have said every death is tragic but the cold math is 2,000 causalties for America's longest war is pretty good actually. Some one day totals in WWII rivalled that.

D-Day comes to mind, as does operation Cobra, Antietam, Gettysburg, Fredericksburg, and several of their WW1 offensives.

Though as far as I'm aware the Romans still win the contest for most military casualties in a day with Cannae, pegged around 60 thousand plus.

I bet the Soviets could top that on multiple occasions in WWII, especially 1941, and Kursk.

I thought the Battle of the Somme took the cake.I know the British took 60 thousand casualties in a day.

Nope, only 50 thousand plus total casualties, only about 20 thousand or so were actually killed.

I bet the Soviets could top that on multiple occasions in WWII, especially 1941, and Kursk.

That's killed, not total casualties including prisoners. Plus, most of those battles raged across several days if not weeks, lowering the actual daily death count.

 Samus_aran115 wrote:


As usual, I entirely agree. As much of a mess that it is, the very least we could do for the Afghan people is do the job we said we would do.

It's curious that you mention the bolded part. Never would have thought of that. I'm a bit conflicted, really. On one hand, people are dying for a cause that they personally don't care about or have any moral view on. On the other, people are dying to assure the "mission" of them being there in the first place. It seems like, given the relatively low casualty rate, COs are given a unique position, where they can make decisions that may be detrimental to the fighting force, but very significant towards the eventual goal... Or vice versa.

True story. When I was in Kajaki we had men manning the peaks 24 hours a day, during night hours, we would spot the enemy, between midnight and usually 0400hrs, digging, clearly laying IEDs, because the nearest inhabited town was several miles away, they were always in the waddis that we used for fire support or patrol, and the obvious one, there was no farmland for miles, and they were digging in the pitch black. They always worked in pairs, very occasionally in threes.

We used to kill them. The guys on the peaks would shoot them, or if the range was too far, we used to drop a Javelin on the fethers. It was sanctioned, apparently the cost was worth the results.. namely, a lack of IEDs and mines in the AO.

This went on for about 6 weeks when I was there, in that time we killed maybe, 5 or 6 Taliban, and IEDs and such was at a minimum. At this point, brigade gave the order that only warning shots could be fired, because the enemy were not a DIRECT threat to our lives. My OC (Major in the SBS) had a huge issue with this and there was a hoo-hah, but long story short, they pulled the plug on this overly aggressive tactic, the Taliban learned sharpish that we were only pinging shots over their heads, and they would run away, only to return to some other frequently used spot a half hour later.

IED/Mine usage went through the roof, and what was a once a month occurance (pinging guys digging in the dead of night) started happening on a daily basis. 3 months later, despite all of our efforts with detection equipment and good drills, my friends Dave Marsh and Chippie Thornton were killed by two anti tank mines laid on top of each other in a wadi in Kajaki. I was disgusted, and I was very bitter about it. I actually said to our OC a few weeks earlier "Does someone need to get blown in half before we can do what needs to be done out here?"

3 years later, I'm less bitter. Age and experience have taught me that the main aim is more important than the individual. Convincing the ANA and the wider populace that we are there to help is more important than the lives of two soldiers, and I won't bore you with any more details... but the story is basically there for what its worth to illustrate the point.

We are wearing kid gloves. If the ROE was slackened the troops on the ground would be more than happy to wreak a bit more havoc. I think that the professionalism of our troops is exemplary, they don't snap and go ape gak very often, despite all of the frustration, and the many deaths caused by our "allies" in the ANP. Occasionally we feth up and drop a bomb on something that didn't want bombing, very very occasionally a soldier purposely does something aweful, but its rare as rocking horse gak.

We occupy the moral high ground, the majority of Afghans know it, the majority of Muslims know it.

The only ones who don't, are the ones we call "Top Tier Taliban" as opposed to "ten dollar Taliban"

You know the ones I mean. The ones that will always be unreachable. The ones who dialogue doesn't affect, and never will. The Bin Ladens and the Abu al-Zarqawis and the civvies with the big signs that say "BEHEAD THE JEWS" at demonstrations in Europe and the USA.

And those fethers old chap, eventually wind up getting both barrells anyway.

So feth what they think!

Most deadly battle in US history is the Battle of the Bulge. (excluding Civil War because both sides were American).