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I Guess We Don't Have The Right
by James Glaser January 25, 2011 
Why do you think it is that the number of troops wounded in our wars is never given to us by the news media? I guess we don't have the right to know those numbers, at least on a daily or even a weekly basis. We do get the figures with a delay of several months, every few months. Did you know that in some months of 2010 over 600 American troops were wounded? That is on top of the 80 some who were killed in those months. For totals, this past year 711 Americans were killed and 5,182 were wounded in Afghanistan. I am sure you know as I know the reason the number of troops wounded are never given to us. Americans would stop supporting the war if they were. Washington can't very well hide the number of troops killed because of how public those funerals have become. If every day of the week we heard or read that another dozen or twenty of our troops were killed or wounded, it wouldn't take long for people to say, "Enough is enough." The daily average works out to over 16 per day being killed or wounded. One would have to believe with our military and its superior fire power, we would have to be killing at least ten times our losses. So the Afghans must be losing about 160 a day, but they keep on fighting. You have to remember though, we are the attacking force, and the Afghans have no place to go. They can't even think about taking their troops home because they are home. It is an accurate statement to say that the Afghans fighting us feel that they are defending their homeland from... us. Of course just like in our war in Iraq, the Pentagon is not keeping body counts of the number of Afghans we kill. They learned in the Vietnam War that even piles of enemy dead can wear on the American public. So here we are with this war in Afghanistan where we have secret attacks going on into neighboring Pakistan; where we are in a war that every so often we learn of some new secret weapon like Predator Drones; and where our daily battle losses are kept a secret, too. As long as Washington can keep our losses and their losses a secret from the American people, they will be able to keep this war going. And the longer Washington can keep this war going, the longer the Military Industrial Complex can keep their profits flowing in. So, the reason that you and I have no right to learn what is happening in our war in Afghanistan is that we are potential impediments to the flow of profits to the Defense Industry. Washington fears that if America's citizens knew the things they keep secret about the War in Afghanistan, those citizens would stop this war like they did Vietnam. That is why you and I have no right to know how many Americans are being killed and wounded on a daily bases and why we have no right to know how many Afghans we are killing and wounding.. And for the Afghans, we are only talking Taliban losses. Washington will never ever tell us how many innocent women, children, old and infirmed we kill. Many secrets keep the profits flowing. |
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