President Barack Obama tonight announced to his citizens that America has declared war on a desolate, arid and mountainous nation called Afghanistan. The President said he will deploy 30,000 additional American soldiers to join 70,000 already there from a previous war. The purpose of the war is to defeat a handful* of enemy Afghanistan tribal warriors who fight under the nom de guerre of Taliban, which in the Afghani language Pashto means “students.” This band of “insurgents” was supposedly eliminated during the previous and still on-going special U.S. war, referred to as “Operation Enduring Freedom.” Apparently, the Freedom did not Endure, as the band of Taliban had since regrouped. Since the first US-Afghan war began in 2001, more than $228 billion American taxpayer dollars have been spent. The additional troops are needed because, as previous foreign aggressors, e.g. the former Soviet Union, have discovered, it takes about 100 modern war-equipped soldiers to fight, and maybe not even defeat, a single Afghani nationalist.
*Western military analysts say it is difficult to gauge the number of Taliban fighters under arms in Afghanistan. In October 2007, the New York Times reported the group might field as many as ten thousand fighters, but a much smaller fraction–less than three thousand–are full-time insurgents. Those numbers inched up in June 2008, when coordinated suicide bombings freed roughly four hundred Taliban fighters from a prison in Kandahar. Analysts also note that the Taliban and its core of fighters have become increasingly fragmented, and are driven to battle for a variety of competing reasons.
Click here to see how much US middle east wars are costing us: http://costofwar.com/
and here: http://www.nationalpriorities.org/cost_of_war_afghanistan
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