Check status of Afghanistan war at : Feb 2013 | Dec 2011 | Dec 2010 | Jun 2010 | Dec 2009 | Oct 2008.

A total of 3,485 NATO/ISAF troops died in Afghanistan over the past 13 years, including 2,356 Americans and 1,129 allies, or an average of 249 fatalities per year. A total of 20,067 US military were wounded in action. The war cost US taxpayers about $1 trillion. The Iraq and the Afghan wars together incurred 128,496 cases of post-traumatic stress disorder, 307,282 instances of traumatic brain injury, 1,573 major limb amputations, and 235 service members deaths of self-inflicted wounds.

"The US-led coalition in Afghanistan ended its combat mission Sunday [28 December 2014], marking the formal — if not real — end to the longest war in American history (...) Despite Sunday's bowing out, the US will remain involved in Afghanistan's fight against the Taliban for years to come" wrote Time. For President Obama, the US "combat mission in Afghanistan is ending, and the longest war in American history is coming to a responsible conclusion."

In other words, after 13 years of war against a bunch of supposedly backward insurgents, the US military colossus and their powerful NATO allies have achieved nothing but havoc. While claiming that the war episode came to a responsible conclusion — whatever this may mean —, they acknowledge their blatant failure. They cannot afford to boost the war effort further up, and fear that the enterprise might ultimately end up in a humiliating stampede like the Saigon fall in April 1975, so they declare the war over. On the other hand, aware that they missed the target, they look for alternatives, hoping to continue and win the war by proxy, but still keeping, for all practical purposes, thousands of troops — 10,800 US Operation Freedom's Sentinel and other NATO's Resolute Support Mission personnel — in the ground. Apart from brainstorming creative labels for their interventions, US and NATO assailants do not have a clue of how to clean the mess they created.

US Presidents G.W. Bush and Obama, as well as their NATO factotums, should have pondered the words of wisdom of a learned war maker, the British Winston Churchill, who once said that "The statesman who yields to war fever must realise that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events (...) Always remember, however sure you are that you could easily win, that there would not be a war if the other man did not think he also had a chance." (My Early Life, Chapter 18, With Buller To The Cape)

Sources: Afghanistan: Coalition Fatalities, US DoD - Defense Casualty Analysis System, Congressional Research Service [CRS] Reports RS22452, RL32492.

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