100 NATO troops killed would have been a bad year early in the Afghan War, but nearly nine years in, the death toll is soaring and 100 is now the toll for a single month, as the record June toll continued to rise at a disturbing rate.
In fact June came to an end with at least 103 NATO soldiers slain, 61 of them Americans. The toll was more than double the toll for May, which was itself the worst May since the war began. The previous record toll for a single month was 77, in August of 2009.
The fact that the new record was set in June is particularly troubling, as the death tolls in Afghanistan usually don’t hit their peak at a given point in a year until later in the summer. With several more months of warm weather to come, NATO may well be facing comparably large tolls for quite some time.
In fact Gen. David Petraeus, who was today confirmed as the new commander for the Afghan War, has predicted that violence will continue to worsen in the months ahead, and has shrugged off the massive toll as something wholly expected from President Obama’s latest escalation.