In the latest installment of this meme, Ira Stoll highlights the fact that record numbers of US troops have been killed since Obama took office:
Already, hundreds more American troops have been killed in Afghanistan during the less than three years of the Obama administration than during the eight years of the George W. Bush administration.
According to the iCasualties.org Web site,
whose count more or less tracks that of other sites devoted to these statistics, 630 American soldiers died in the Afghanistan operation in the years 2001 through 2008, when Mr. Bush was president, while 1097 American soldiers have died in the years 2009, 2010, and 2011. Even if you allocate the 30 or so American soldiers killed in January 2009 entirely to Mr. Bush, who was president until the January 20 inauguration, it is quite a record.
Include Iraq, and the comparison tells a similar story: about 1,300 Americans killed in operations related to Iraq and Afghanistan combined during the first two and a half or so years we’ve had of the Obama administration, versus less than 600 American casualties in the first full three years of the George W. Bush administration.
Well, for almost the first year there were no troops in Afghanistan at all, so that's a bit of a stretch. Nonetheless, I think Stoll is onto something, especially with respect to civilian casualties which, though unintentional and dwarfed by the Taliban's extremism, have been awful in Af-Pak.
But it also seems to me that Obama is ending the war in Iraq (even though we may need Moqtada al-Sadr to prevent a semi-permanent US presence) and has finally engaged and won the Afghanistan battle, which Bush mishandled and lost. By win, of course, I mean simply get out with the least loss of face and the decimation of al Qaeda, including its leader. That counts for something.
The flipside, of course, is also: where are the neocons celebrating Obama's succcessful prosecution of the Afghan war and the astonishing act of perseverance and courage that ended with Osama's death and a treasure trove of fresh intelligence? Somewhat muted, I'd say. And the beat goes on …
The Dish 