Bill Boyarsky: Bad News for a Country Tired of War!

This is NOT good news: Barack Obama's plan for a "limited" withdrawal of our troops, most of whom will remain in Afghanistan, many of them fighting, for several years to come. In his speech Wednesday night, the president announced he will "reduce" the US fighting force in Afghanistan by 10,000 at the end of this year, and a total of 33,000 by September 2012. After that, "our troops will be coming home at a steady pace, as Afghan security forces move into the lead. Our mission will then transition from combat to support. By 2014, this process will "allegedly" be complete. At no time did he mention that 68,000 service personnel will remain in Afghanistan after September 2012. In addition, according to the Congressional Research Office, 18,919 "private security contractors" working for the Defense Department will also be serving in Afghanistan, performing duties seemingly indistinguishable from those done by American military personnel. In other words, after the "pullout" more than 86,000 personnel will be will remain engaged in fighting, or the vague support duties cited by the president. They will add to the human and economic toll of a war that has killed 1,632 American troops, and has wounded 11,191. The financial cost is now more than $426 billion. With the Iraq war added, the figure is now $1.2 trillion. Though he began the war from a position of weakness, it has been pretty much ignored by cable news and much of the rest of the "mainstream media" the American people have a somewhat different view: Around the country, local papers and television stations, as well as NPR have told the story of its human costs in interviews with survivors of dead servicemen and servicewomen, and with stories about the wounded survivors. When I served as Advisory Team Leader in Trung Lap, Vietnam, and had to stand up to a little tiny US general, I pointed out a huge pile of lifeless American soldiers, just recently brought in after one company's mission. The "little general" assured me that he would make certain that they would soon be picked up by our graves-registration people, and not to worry about their fate!