Afghanistan is MORE DANGEROUS than Iraq - and other things the Government doesn't want YOU to know

As most of my friends know, I've been back a couple of months now. A couple of months after spending 12 months (including last Christmas, etc.) fighting in the war on Terror in Afghanistan.

Also, as most of my close friends know, I am a conservative guy - politically, religiously, socially and fiscally (with a few exceptions). I have no use for most of the Left. Sure, I have many liberal friends (in 'real life' and online) - they know how I am and still love me anyway :)

That being said, I am infuriated by the Government covering up the danger of Afghanistan and the casualties. On September 8th, as some people remember, I lost two friends and fellow soldiers in a VBIED in Kabul, Afghanistan. I was particularly close with one of the individuals - SSG Ron Paul. There's been many killed in Afghanistan before and since - such as PFC Alex Oceguera, who gave the ultimate sacrifice for all of us on Halloween. I want to make sure that people like Ron and Alex are never forgotten, even if the war is. To that end, I wear a titanium bracelet with SSG Paul and SFC Howard's name, unit, and place of being KIA. I've met some of Alex's family and friends on MySpace - I hope to be able to do more someday to help preserve his memory, too. These people aren't just statistics to bandy about as political footballs - they were real people - loving, caring, breathing humans - just like us. They deserve to be remembered. They deserve to be honored. They deserve to live on through us.

OK, what am I on about? A lot of this comes from reading this interview, published online yesterday:

http://www.motherjones.com/interview/2006/12/scavetta.html

Now, most of the stuff on this site is typical leftist whining and complaining and bitching. I came across this article while searching for stuff on Mehtar Lam - the place I spent 5 of the 12 months in Afghanistan. This interview not only re-affirms my solid belief that Afghanistan is more dangerous than Iraq, it confirms it. We just don't have the number of troops there that we do in Iraq, but ratio-wise your chance of death IS higher in Afghanistan as a U.S. service member. They bury Afghanistan on the back pages of the newspaper, and as this interview points out, delays giving out the details on each casualty until the news cycle is over:

"It's a public relations tactic. A news cycle lasts 48 to 72 hours. Say Johnny Smith from New Haven, Conn., is in Kunar Province where his American infantry battalion is operating. He's in a fight with local insurgents .. not Osama bin Laden, maybe some foreign fighters, but mostly local. Johnny Smith dies in combat. Within 24 hours there's a news release that comes out of this island we call Kabul that says a coalition soldier was killed in Afghanistan today. We're not going to give out his name because we're going to say, "The next of kin have to be notified." We're not going to give out his nationality because we're all part of this quote "coalition."

But here's the sad fact: 99.99 % of coalition forces in Kunar are in fact American. So now in the news .. NBC news, national news, wire services .. the only thing that's released is that a "coalition" soldier was killed in Afghanistan today.

And 72 hours later when the DOD finally releases Private Johnny Smith's name, the New Haven Register and Channel 8 will pick up the memorial service and how sad Johnny's family is. But in San Francisco, they never hear about it. In Minnesota, they never hear about it. In Florida, they never hear about it. It's a very clever public affairs strategy. Now we have NATO in Afghanistan, so it's, "A NATO soldier died."

This interview also touches on how our presence in Afghanistan is marketed as searching for Osama bin Laden. He's right - OBL was never mentioned in any of the remote locations I served in while there. I did hear about al Qaeda, Hezb-al-Islami etc.

I have to admit that before I set foot in Afghanistan, I thought these things about Afghanistan:

It's part of the Middle East - the same as Iraq - nothing but desert.
We are there to try and flush out Osama bin Laden.

These two things turned out to be far from the truth. Yes, there is a desert in Afghanistan - in the west and by Kandahar. I never saw it. I spent my time in the east and northeast - mountainous desert. No sand though - 'mountainous desert' refers more to the terrain - and not 'desert' in the Iraq/Middle Eastern sense. We had 4 seasons. We had a bitterly cold winter in Gardez (my first 7 months were spent there), with snow, blizzards, and below zero temperatures at times.

Like I said before, OBL was never mentioned, except in jokes. But everyone before I left for Afghanistan and since I've been back has made a comment/question or two concerning OBL and his whereabouts.

The delaying of the KIA person or person's details makes sense to me now. Whenever there was a 'coalition' death, all our comms to anywhere outside of Afghanistan was halted at least 24-48 hours, sometimes longer. Is this really out of respect for the family? Methinks it *does* have a lot to do with delaying the release to the media in the USA and elsewhere. Sadly, it is true - one just hears that 'a coalition soldier was killed today' - then you don't hear a thing except maybe in the locale where the casualty was from a few days later.

Afghanistan is truly 'the Forgotten War' - just like Korea in the 1950s. In this age in which we live, where communication is instant and reliable, it's a shame it is this way. People here since I've been back often mis-speak and say to others "Patrick here just got back from IRAQ". VA doctors and counselors that I am seeing for PTSD often say "Iraq" rather than "Afghanistan", even though I've met with some of them a couple of times each already. Even the VA clinic name for the newest veterans is called the "OIF" clinic. It's OEF for Afghanstan. OIF = Operation Iraqi Freedom. OEF = Operation Enduring Freedom. "There's just too few of you Afghan vets out there", they say.

I guess I should have realized how unimportant we were (even to the Army) when we were training at Fort Carson, Colorado (Colorado Springs). 99.9% of our training was geared towards Iraq. The only Afghanistan-specific training our group recieved was the Afghan women who gave us a few culture and language lessons. Only one of the cadre (trainers) had ever been in Afghanistan. We asked why we were getting Iraq-centered training, and the response was "The Army hasn't developed training specifically for groups going there yet." Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, over? We (the USA) went to Afghanistan in October of 2001, right after 9/11 ... nearly two years before we went into Iraq.

Sorry - I digressed a bit.

People just don't want to be reminded that those who have decided to risk their lives for this cause are dying in the poppy fields, mountains and roads of Afghanistan. People seem to *want* to be reminded about Iraq - the big political football. They like to use it to deride President Bush and his administration. (See: Cindy Sheehan, Al Franken, et al) There's so many differing accounts and stories about Iraq it's hard to know what's true and what's political spinning (from both sides). It doesn't help that the US mainstream media makes no secret of it's disdain for the president and the Republican Party (or conservatism in general). Reporters who go there rarely leave the safe zones or see what the war there is really like.

Since I haven't (yet) been to Iraq, I really cannot speak to what the situation is there - (except to quote statistics - which show Afghanistan to be more dangerous). I can speak about Afghanistan. Is anybody listening?

(What I've been up to since being home will have to wait for another time, if anyone's interested).