Between the floundering economy, speculation about swine flu pandemics, and their endless fascination with Susan Boyle, the American press simply doesn’t seem to have much time to cover the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan anymore. Yet for Americans who have put those wars out of sight/out of mind, a pair of bombings in the past 24 hours have served as a stark reminder of the danger still faced on both fronts.
Late yesterday, a US convoy was hit by a roadside bomb in Fallujah, Iraq. Three Americans were killed, one soldier, a State Department official and a civilian contractor for the Pentagon. Two others were wounded in the attack.
Then today, a convoy in eastern Kapisa Province, Afghanistan was rammed by a suicide bomber’s car. Three US soldiers were killed, along with three Afghan civilians. Two others were wounded in the attack. The small province has rarely seen such violence, and is far removed from the more dangerous Afghan southwest.
Not only the loss of six Americans, but the fact that they were killed in two places, an Iraqi city they had already deemed safe and withdrawn from and an Afghan province far removed from the center of the insurgent battle, show that for the over 175,000 US troops in those two warzones, and for the countless civilian contractors, no place is truly safe.