Seven US soldiers and three Afghan allies were killed on Thursday when a Black Hawk helicopter crashed in southern Kandahar, Afghanistan, NATO authorities said.
“The crash resulted in the deaths of four International Security Assistance Force service members, three United States Forces-Afghanistan service members, three members of the Afghan National Security Forces, and one Afghan civilian interpreter,” International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said in a statement.
ISAF would not divulge the cause of the crash, saying it was under investigation. While the Taliban claimed responsibility for shooting down the helicopter, this could not be confirmed.
However, Afghan insurgents have been successful in shooting down NATO helicopters in the past and the area where the helicopter went down is an insurgent stronghold.
US and NATO authorities are loathe to admit something like that happening though.
The U.S. has begun to recognize that the war is a total failure and the Obama administration is scrambling for a partial withdrawal by 2014. As Dexter Filkins wrote recently in the New Yorker, reiterating the establishment view: “After eleven years, nearly two thousand Americans killed, sixteen thousand Americans wounded, nearly four hundred billion dollars spent, and more than twelve thousand Afghan civilians dead since 2007, the war in Afghanistan has come to this: the United States is leaving, mission not accomplished.”
David Rothkopf, CEO and editor at large of Foreign Policy magazine, has written that President Obama was reluctant to recommit to the Afghan war with a surge in troops from the beginning, but that he did it anyways because he “could not afford to look weak” or “come under political attack from the right.” So, thousands of coalition soldiers and tens of thousands of Afghans have been killed because Obama was afraid to be called a wimp.
for what?
Oh, well…sh*t does happen.
7 less possible psychopaths roaming Afghanistan and later the USA.
Many of these soldiers are unwitting victims of our capitalist system. To label them all psychopaths is not helpful. Also during and after the Vietnam war the greatest opposition to continuing the war came from the soldiers themselves.
Tom, you have a point there and I concede, but I used the word "possible" for that reason. Moreover and using the pre emptive logic of empire, to neutralize them is well within the concept.
who's NEXT???????????
The Taliban should post video of this to prove they actually shot the chopper down. They've probably downed a lot of them in the past 11 years, we just don't know about it. Hundreds of U.S. helicopters as well as jet fighters and other aircraft were shot down in Vietnam, but the NVA and VC were being supplied with modern (for the time) Soviet and Chinese weapons. Perhaps the Taliban doesn't release video evidence because they don't want to give away what type of anti-aircraft weapons they actually have, Stinger missiles or more sophisticated stuff.
Not sure if the Taliban walk around with a Canon Digital camcorder everyday like you and your family do buying products in Disneyland.
A disaster without end. http://news.yahoo.com/another-afghan-police-attac…
Out now!
It is reported that Obama authorized a surge in troops because because he “could not afford to look weak” or “come under political attack from the right"
No, what looks weak is a President who makes decisions based on political fears even if he is unsure of the wisdom of such decisions, and not on firmly held beliefs of what would be right regardless of political ramifications.
The President didn't want to look weak so now the US looks weak.