Losing Sight
February 1, 2018 2:32 PM   Subscribe

A 4-Year-Old Girl Was the Sole Survivor of a U.S. Drone Strike in Afghanistan. Then She Disappeared.

“We do not necessarily believe Aisha was in a drone strike, but I know that is one of the stories,” she said. When pressed for details, she said, “I have been told not to discuss that,” adding, “We have no facts. There are no facts.”

“I am just telling you that the child was not abducted,” Wilson said. “The child’s life was saved. The family absolutely knew it.”
posted by standardasparagus (7 comments total) 16 users marked this as a favorite
 
Four years old.

FOUR YEARS OLD.
posted by BlueHorse at 3:39 PM on February 1, 2018 [1 favorite]


We were at about 500,000 casualties from the Afghan war as of 2014 (see Table 5, p. 20, and the following paragraph.) I wonder whether Trump's new push will achieve Chomsky's much-mocked prediction of several million deaths as a result of the invasion.
posted by Coventry at 4:24 PM on February 1, 2018 [3 favorites]


Have the victims of 9/11 been avenged yet? How many more Afghans need to die before America can say the scales are even?
posted by dazed_one at 5:16 PM on February 1, 2018 [7 favorites]




If the US left Afghanistan right this second it would be horrible.

But, and this is the important question, would it be more horrible than if the US remains there?

The US has no actual purpose in Afghanistan, it has no definition of what victory there would look like, it has no mission, it has nothing but an ever mounting body count that it has used to replace all of the other things. As in Vietnam there is no route to victory, not even an idea of what victory would mean, and so the number of dead have become the only metric.

Today America killed 10 insurgents/terrorists/fighters/whatevers.

As if somehow there's a fixed number of "bad guys" and once they're all dead then mission accomplished and everyone can go home because evil is defeated.

My nation is mass producing enemies in Afghanistan. Every drone strike results in scores of people who have good cause to hate America bitterly. And yet even Obama continued the failed, stupid, harmful, policy. Trump has only refrained from doing worse out of sheer incompetence (and possibly a deep rooted fear/respect of the military) that has keep him from actually ordering much of anything.

And, further, America has proven it is faithless and that those Afghans who help us will be abandoned, our oath to admit them as citizens broken, and left to be killed slowly by their fellow countrymen who feel they betrayed Afghanistan to America.

Sooner or later, as in Vietnam, the US must admit defeat and slink away to leave the survivors at the non-existent mercy of whatever power arises in our absence. The only question is how many will be killed by American forces until then.
posted by sotonohito at 10:30 AM on February 2, 2018 [6 favorites]


And yet even Obama continued the failed, stupid, harmful, policy. T

Think of all the complaints about the episode of BoJack Horseman that feature Neal McBeal - navy seal.

The "thank you for your service" line is one that few will cross. And Obama was not going to be the 1st to cross that line.
posted by rough ashlar at 3:53 PM on February 2, 2018


It's hard to imagine any outcome in Afghanistan worse than the present one, particularly considering that the US is already losing the war. So it's not a matter of propping up a bad regime; it's just a question of which course will lead to fewer casualties before its inevitable fall.
posted by Joe in Australia at 4:54 AM on February 3, 2018


« Older These trying times - taking a collective moment...   |   They grew up poor. They had to learn the rules of... Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments