Matthew Hoh's Resignation Letter speaks volumes about why the war in Afghanistan must end ASAP, and without victory parades.
Now in our deadliest (for USAmericans, that is) month in Afghanistan, I hope that we will soon arrive at a clear tipping-point in collective self-consciousness in the USA- complete admission that we're not behaving as the nation that we pretend to be. As part of this change, we'll remember the myriad people in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere who have suffered and died needlessly during our recent national rampages.
In some of the most recent war coverage, "9 Dead" appeared in the title, although one victim was Afghan. Most said 8, because that was the number of GIs. After waking up from this long nightmare we're going to value the lives of our own, and also those of "collateral" casualties- more than our missing-in-action cause. After we wake up, a lot fewer people are going to be killed in the act of pretending to be heros, or falling mostly unnoticed in the hundreds of thousands of fatal bit-parts that our self-absorbed farce has consumed.