By US deaths, as of today, Afghanistan is Obama's war

Five hundred seventy-five: That's how many US soldiers have lost their lives in the Afghanistan war since Barack Obama became president at noon on January 20, 2009, according to the icasualties.org web site, which tracks US soldiers' deaths using reports received from the Department of Defense - and which is widely cited in the media as a source of information on US deaths. According to the same web site, 575 is also the number of US soldiers who lost their lives in the Afghanistan war during the Presidency of George W. Bush. Therefore, total US deaths in Afghanistan have doubled in Afghanistan under President Obama, and when the next US soldier is reported dead, the majority of US deaths in Afghanistan will have occurred under President Obama. This grim landmark should be reported in the media, and White House reporters should ask Robert Gibbs to comment on it. It is quite relevant to Gibbs' implicit attempt to marginalize critics of the war in Afghanistan by claiming that they wouldn't be satisfied with anything less than the abolition of the Pentagon. The majority of Americans - including the overwhelming majority of Democrats and at least 60 percent of House Democrats - are deeply skeptical of the administration's Afghanistan policy not because they are knee-jerk pacifists - obviously they are not - but because the human and financial cost of the war is rising, we have nothing to show for the increased cost and the administration has not articulated a clear plan to reach the endgame; indeed, administration officials, led by General Petraeus, have just launched a public relations campaign to undermine the substantial drawdown in troops next summer that Democratic leaders in Congress, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, have said that they expect.