An Afghan Air Corps pilot, angered by an argument with nine American trainers at Kabul airport, pulled a gun on the Americans, disarmed them and methodically killed them, officials said today.
The shooter then apparently shot and killed himself.
The Afghan military said the gunman was a 20 year veteran of the Afghan Air Corps who had gotten in an argument with the American trainers during a meeting in a conference room at the Afghan Air Force headquarters.
....
The dead included eight U.S military personnel and one American contractor. Five Afghan soldiers were also injured in the shooting, said Bahader.
It was the deadliest incident so far of an Afghan ally turning against his coalition partners, officials said. This is the seventh time this year that coalition soldiers or Afghan security forces have been killed by either members of the Afghan security force or insurgents impersonating them.
What the hell is the goal of the US and its coalition partners in Afghanistan? We are engaged in a war seemingly without end at great expense in lives and money. The British tried to get control of Afghanistan and failed. The Russians tried and failed, at the expense of the collapse of their empire. Why can't we learn from history? We should have destroyed the Taliban's training camps after the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center and then left the country.
Here we are 10 years later having lost 2436 lives, probably not counting those mentioned above, with numbers more wounded, and having spent a total of $455.4 billion, and what have we gained?
Oh, terrible. RIP. :-(
ReplyDeleteWill it ever end? 10 years!
ReplyDeleteI didn't realise it was up to $455bn. That is an unimaginable amount of money. In fact, there's a lot that could have been done with that money, other than spend it on what it has been spent on, to say the least. Where will it end? ...
ReplyDeleteCathy, that's the estimate to the end of the year. Perhaps the figure will be a billion or two off.
ReplyDelete