Today is the second-last day of July. Barring any bad news today or tomorrow, the death toll of American troops killed in Afghanistan will stand at 63. That surpasses last month's total of 60, making this month the deadliest so far in the almost nine years of the war.
No-one is bothering to keep an accurate count of Afghans who have been killed. It's not like in Apocalypse Now where "death cards" are being scattered on the corpses of dead Taliban fighters. Walt suspects they're taking fewer casualties than we are. One (1) was killed yesterday in Zabul province so that would make the score 4 for them and just one for us.
Civilians, though, are another matter. Also yesterday, four Afghan civilians were killed and three were injured when their vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb, also in Zabul. It was when police arrived at the scene that the Taliban started shooting.
Meanwhile, in Kandahar, where Canadians are doing most of the fighting, a woman and child were killed and another child was wounded when a bomb planted on a motorcycle exploded. The intended victim was a politician. The woman and children were innocent bystanders, the kind of people we're there to protect.
Such is the war in Afghanistan, yet we soldier on, if you'll forgive the pun. Don't you wonder why?
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