Rising U.S. Military Death Toll

[X Factor 1,112]

In Rising Toll, Signs of a Changing Conflict

His war was almost over. Or so Marina Buckley thought when her son Lance Cpl. Gregory T. Buckley Jr. told her that he would be returning from southern Afghanistan to his Marine Corps base in Hawaii in late August, three months early.

2,003 Deaths in Afghanistan

Instead, Lance Corporal Buckley became the 1,990th American service member to die in the war when, on Aug. 10, he and two other Marines were shot inside their base in Helmand Province by a man who appears to have been a member of the Afghan forces they were training.

A week later, with the death of Specialist James A. Justice of the Army in a military hospital in Germany, the United States military reached 2,000 dead in the nearly 11-year-old conflict, based on an analysis by The New York Times of Department of Defense records. The calculation by The Times includes deaths not only in Afghanistan but also in Pakistan and other nations where American forces are directly involved in aiding the war.

Nearly nine years passed before American forces reached their first 1,000 dead in the war. The second 1,000 came just 27 months later, a testament to the intensity of fighting prompted by President Obama’s decision to send 33,000 additional troops to Afghanistan in 2010, a policy known as the surge.

In more ways than his family might have imagined, Lance Corporal Buckley, who had just turned 21 when he died, typified the troops in that second wave of 1,000. According to the Times analysis, three out of four were white, nine out of 10 were enlisted service members, and one out of two died in either Kandahar Province or Helmand Province in Taliban-dominated southern Afghanistan. Their average age was 26.

The dead were also disproportionately Marines like Lance Corporal Buckley. Though the Army over all has suffered more dead in the war, the Marine Corps, with fewer troops, has had a higher casualty rate: At the height of fighting in late 2010, two out of every 1,000 Marines in Afghanistan were dying, twice the rate of the Army. Marine units accounted for three of the five units hardest hit during the surge.

Suffering the most casualties was the Third Battalion, Fifth Marine Regiment out of Camp Pendleton, Calif. Twenty-five of its Marines died and more than 180 were wounded, many with multiple amputations, during a bloody seven-month deployment in Helmand that began in fall 2010.

The analysis also shows that Army casualties during the surge fell heaviest on two bases with frequently deployed units: Fort Campbell in Kentucky, home to the 101st Airborne Division, which recorded the most Army deaths in the surge, and Fort Drum in New York, home to the 10th Mountain Division.

The summer remained the peak season for fighting, with the single highest period for American deaths being July, August and September 2010, when at least 143 troops died. And as has been the case since at least 2008, improvised explosive devices, known as I.E.D.’s, remained a leading cause of death and injury, along with small-arms fire, the analysis showed.

But this year, a new threat emerged: attacks by Afghans dressed in the uniforms of Afghan security forces. In just the past two weeks, at least nine Americans have been killed in such insider attacks, and for the year to date, at least 39 non-Afghan troops, most of them American, have been killed by men dressed as members of the Afghan security forces, the most since the war began.

Those insider attacks have increased concerns about NATO’s ability to turn security operations over to Afghan forces by 2014, the deadline set by President Obama for withdrawing the remaining American forces. For families, the deaths have raised hard questions about whether the Pentagon is doing enough to protect its troops from their own allies.

Though Afghanistan is now considered the nation’s longest war, at 128 months and counting, the number of dead is less than half the total in the Iraq war, where more than 4,480 died in eight years. More active-duty and reserve soldiers killed themselves last year, 278, than died in combat in Afghanistan, 247.

None of that brings solace to the families of the dead. For the Buckleys, of Oceanside, N.Y., their son’s death so near the end of his tour, so late in the long war and possibly at the hand of a purported ally, was uniquely anguishing.

As Mrs. Buckley recounted things her son loved — basketball, girls, movies, the beach — bitterness choked her words.

“Our forces shouldn’t be there,” she said. “It should be over. It’s done. No more.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/22/us/war-in-afghanistan-claims-2000th-american-life.html?emc=na

[slim 1,533]

Alexander the Great taught them nothing.

Nor did the Soviets.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

We should have left that place a long time ago. Every day we're there is a waste of blood and treasure.

[Ban Hammer 13,726]

We should have left that place a long time ago. Every day we're there is a waste of blood and treasure.

agreed.

[X Factor 1,112]

2000 doesn't sound that bad politically...that said the number is much more if you include suicides, friendly fire etc.