It’s good that President Obama has gone to Afghanistan. There is much to see. And people have been speculating that Afghan “President” Hamid Karzai was informed only at the last minute because the White House doesn’t trust him. The White House has reason not to trust him. Which isn’t the only bad news out of Afghanistan. Despite some attempts to spin it otherwise, the war in Afghanistan is going the way wars in Afghanistan always go. Badly.
The Associated Press has some stark facts:
The number of U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan has roughly doubled in the first three months of 2010 compared to the same period last year as Washington has added tens of thousands of additional soldiers to reverse the Taliban’s momentum.
Those deaths have been accompanied by a dramatic spike in the number of wounded, with injuries more than tripling in the first two months of the year and trending in the same direction based on the latest available data for March.
U.S. officials have warned that casualties are likely to rise even further as the Pentagon completes its deployment of 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan and sets its sights on the Taliban’s home base of Kandahar province, where a major operation is expected in the coming months.
Of course, this followed the big offensive in Marja. Which some tried to claim was some great military triumph. Was it?