Last week, I saw a couple tweets like this one proclaiming that the “first” American service member killed in Kabul had been identified.
Now, I know what it meant and I’m not pretending otherwise: It was stating that the first of the 13 U.S. service members killed by terrorists while defending the airport in Kabul had been identified. And I hasten to add that I am saddened by the death of Navy Medic Max Soviak.
But my mind works in a kind of funny way. And the unintentionally vague headline is to me, the perfect metaphor for the inexcusable way that right-wing Republicans, Democrats who vow to investigate President Biden, and many members of the corporate media are treating the recent violence in Afghanistan: They are acting like this week is the first time violence has happened and they are shocked I say shocked that it occurred. All part of a calculated and evil game to harm President Biden politically. Never mind that they are ignoring 20 years of violence, death and injury in Afghanistan and also in Iraq.
Any true account of the post-911 wars waged by the U.S. must take in the totality of the death and destruction. Now I don’t even expect them to acknowledge how many non-American civilians and military fighters died due to these U.S. conquests. Or how many U.S. allies were killed or injured. But maybe, just maybe at the very least they could acknowledge the terrible wounds these wars have inflicted upon U.S. service members, their families, and all of us instead of acting like everything was just fine and dandy up until the time that President Biden took the long overdue action to wind down this war. So let’s look at a stark truth:
7,057 U.S. service members have been killed in post-9/11 war operations. And there have been an astounding 30,177 suicides committed by U.S. service members and veterans of these same operations.
I’m a Lefty. I’m to the left of President Biden on pretty much everything, as far as I know anyway. But I support him 100 percent in ending the U.S. invasion of and war against Afghanistan after 20 years of futility and kicking the can down the road. And I would like to see some acknowledgement of the numbers cited above from those who are playing politics in going after President Biden for the withdrawal from Afghanistan and pretending like everything was just peachy before that.
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Postscript:
I used to write a weekly series on Daily Kos about the death and destruction from the U.S. invasion of Iraq and later expanded it to include Afghanistan. I finally had to stop because I couldn’t take it anymore. For those interested to know the stories of just two of the 30,177, you can click the link, which as I recall is one of the last diaries I wrote along those lines.