« America’s longest war »......it was just a sentence on the news the other day....something part of a larger story. But it caught my ear......we’ve had troops on the ground in Afghanistan for 17 years.
17 years........and I began to wonder about the cost.
I don’t mean the monetary investment, I was thinking about the cost in human terms. So I googled and found the following information: 2,372 US soldiers have been killed....1,876 as a result of hostile action. (I don’t know what that means about the rest.) More than 20,000 of our troops have been wounded and more than 1,700 civilian contractors lost their lives in this far away place. And these numbers are probably already obsolete.
These numbers do not speak to lives lost from the countries partnering in this on-going effort. Nor do they speak to the families left behind or trying to help a loved one recover. Nor do they speak to the thousands of Afghan citizens.....both active fighters and innocent bystanders.
17 years fighting an ideology. Using guns to blast beliefs.
Something tells me this isn’t working.
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