Sep 22, 2008

That Other War



I finally had to peel myself away from covering the Presidential campaign to address the horrible level of civilian casualties in Afghanistan-- up 40% this year, with 577 being killed by US and NATO airstrikes. An August 22 attack took out 90 people, 60 of them children. I wonder what level of civilian casualties Americans would tolerate if we were occupied by a foreign country.

The U.N. said 330 civilians died in August alone.

"This is the highest number of civilian deaths to occur in a single month since the end of major hostilities and the ousting of the Taliban regime at the end of 2001," U.N. human rights chief Navi Pillay said in a statement.

Both candidates have expressed interest in escalating the war in Afghanistan. No doubt airstrikes will remain a big part of the strategy.

Wednesday: The Bailout Nightmare

3 Comments:

Blogger TYSEN said...

My morbid sense of grammar noticed that in the sentence "The U.N. said 330 civilians died in August alone." seems to imply that all of the civilians were by themselves when they were killed, a comma would have nailed it. Dropping the "alone" would remove this confusion.

1:30 PM  
Blogger Matt Bors said...

We all die alone.

2:29 PM  
Blogger Brian McFadden said...

Matt wins!

That should be the go-to answer for anyone who's stumped on Jeopardy and/or Sarah Palin at the debates.

9:48 PM  

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