Everyone pray for the world peace.

MonsterHeadphones dot Net

The Afghanistan "milestone" isn't particularly informative. Yes, it was the deadliest month yet for American forces, but not for ISAF overall. Furthermore, the numbers were inflated by the downing of the US Navy SEALs helicopter which, while tragic, is a fluke incident. It has happened before, but overall the number of high casualty crashes in the conflict are low and thus, for a given month, it's a statistical outlier. It is not indicative of the general levels of successful engagements against coalition forces. By claiming that it's a "milestone", the author gives the incorrect impression that coalition deaths are increasing or that the number represents a trend upwards, whereas the opposite is true. In fact, if you leave out the crash and look at the remaining violence from IEDs and hostile engagements, the number of ISAF deaths this Summer is substantially lower than last Summer. Overall, this year could end up with around 1/6 less casualties for ISAF than last year.

Proper context is important.

When discussing attacks on coalition forces, the number of attacks isn't as important as the number of successful attacks, for which you could use casualties as a metric. More frequent, less successful attacks can be interpreted in a number of ways, but it's difficult to argue that it indicates that ISAF is losing ground. A few successful terrorist attacks or assassinations mean less than the ability of the insurgency to successfully attack security forces on a regular basis in multiple geographic locations. If ISAF can leave in 2014 and be in a situation in which the Taliban have to rely primarily on occasional terrorist attacks and assassinations, then the country will be in a heck of a lot stronger of a position than it was even a year ago.

To the end of August, and if you even go ahead and include the chopper crash, coalition casualties are down 15% this year. Go ahead and do the math yourself: http://icasualties.org/oef/

As I pointed out, the chopper crash isn't reflective of the overall situation with respect to ISAF casualties. If you look at the number from last month without that crash, it's 45 deaths. That's hardly an uptick in deaths from day to day violence. As a matter of fact, it's the lowest level of deaths for August since 2007. The Taliban just got lucky and hit a chopper and now all of a sudden commentators are interpreting this last month as indicative of a deteriorating security situation for ISAF, which is not the case.

If in some imaginary scenario there were no ISAF casualties for a year, and then someone brought down a C130 with a SAM and killed 100 troops, it wouldn't indicate that suddenly the Taliban was "winning", as loaded as that term might be.

In the above comment, replace 45 with 52, seven of those were ANA soldiers.

Too many deaths for.. for what? Isn't it enough the big number of deaths in september 2001?
Marferiky.com

Sadly, America’s so-called victory in Iraq is illusive as Al Qaeda led terror attacks have increased and America is ready to wash off its hands in Afghanistan.

Petraeus’s mirage of success was based on putting Iraqis on U. S. payroll and it evaporated the day U. S. payroll stopped.

As for unending Afghan war, U. S. is ready to throw in the towel with the killing of Osama bin Laden not far from Pakistani capital.

Obama administration is already asking Pakistan to arrange for meetings with Afghan Taliban leaders to negotiate a peace deal. A Vietnam-style illusionary peace deal will be reached on Pakistan-dictated terms with Pakistan-chosen Afghan Taliban leaders. Such a mirage will evaporate within few years after U. S./NATO troops depart and Taliban will return with vengeance as U. S. will look the other way.

It's difficult to imagine that we spent so many billions of dollars and traded the lives of so many troops in exchange for Osama Bin Laden, who probably would've died of old age in a year or two anyway. It feels like we underwent a traumatic surgery in order to treat a kidney stone that would've resolved itself...while we're slowly dying of cancer. Focusing too much on little thorns, rather than getting rid of the nettle bush.

Admittedly, I'm not a well paid think tank member or a five star general. I'm just a programmer who builds chiropractic websites for a living. But c'mon!

Milestones are frequent on any highway. Where you see one, usually, there are two more only one mile away. The most significant milestone of recent weeks seems to be the announcement that wholesale easy home projects desertion is the pattern on the Afghan national army.