Iraq and Afghanistan, February 2010

US military deaths in Iraq stayed low last month.

US military deaths in the Afghanistan war went up and passed the 1000 mark. I don’t recall seeing anything in the news about this sad milestone.

Strictly speaking, these numbers are for the whole of Operation Enduring Freedom, not just Afghanistan and the neighboring countries. The folks at icasualties.org point out that this includes deaths in (or due to wounds received in) Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Guantanamo Bay, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Jordan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Philippines, Seychelles, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkey, and Yemen. I’ll continue to refer to OEF as the Afghanistan war—the war started in response to the attacks of September 11.

I’m increasingly pessimistic about our chances of being out of Afghanistan before September 11, 2011.