how the media works...

[curmugeon]

The war goes on... but in America the only people paying attention are those family and friends who suffer the loss.... to stop the war, the war has to be visible... but the curent state of this country and the politics of the media/military/financial complex is to suppress the news. War is good business, the government spends billions on war, a perfect example of the power of the complex. What can we do to break this hold? We need to find a way... I see defense contractors and the people who work for them as nothing more than welfare kings and queens of the war machine.
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Comments

[only4you4.livejournal.com]

maybe it sounds cynically but American losses in Afganistan are not so large
they are comparable with deathes in accidents

In my opinion supreme NATO Command considers Afganistan as large military polygon with "soft" targets (mojaheds are armed with obsolete hand grenade launchers and automatic rifles). At the same time army gets experience of being "under fire". It means much for future, "serious" wars.

Also they defend their business (Production of heroin (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sponsored/russianow/politics/7847007/Heroin-production-in-Afghanistan-has-grown-by-40-times-says-Russian-drugs-tsar.html) growed 40 time since the beginning of the invasion)

[n6vfp.livejournal.com]

Afghanistan is one big failure... costing the United States along billions of dollars a month... as for losses, there may be less than Russia suffered during their time there, but the cost in dollars and cents is enough to make a person wonder if it is all worth it. The government is corrupt, and trying to civilize a tribal culture is impossible.

[only4you4.livejournal.com]

Failure for whom?
For relatives of dead soldiers? For those, who lost health?
Definitely, but it is not failure for American army as the instrument of global war. Because there is _great_ difference between soldier, who was under bullets and the solider, who was not.
The same billions they would spend somewhere in Massachusets or Colorado, the same casualties could be happened because of inappropriate weapon service.

>may be less than Russia suffered

Russian Federation never had troops in Afghanistan.

As for Soviet losses and its comparison to American losses...

Of course now, almost without external military support mojaheds have much less chances than Vietnameses or North Koreans. Honestly, they don't have them at all.

But from another side it is not secret, who (and for which purposes) created Taliban in 80th and who provided it by modern weaponry.

But nevertheless Russia suffers from Afghanistan now much more than SU during that war. Heroin traffic is tremendous and it's consequences have the character of pandemia in some Russian provinces.

Taliban also had inside itselff strong religious component, so they reduced opium production.

But now Afghan red poppy fields are visible from the space, as our austronauts had said.

So it is obvious (at least for many independent observers in Russia) that American Command have the dominant share in this business.

>The government is corrupt, and trying to civilize a tribal culture is impossible.
Why do you think that they are trying to civilize Afghan inhabitants?
If they are not just inside the country, why do you think that they are just inabroad? And (even so) why do you think that US have the right to civilize anybody?

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I think your media simply play on sentiments of your public and use that "vain" human losses as instrument of pressure on ruling politicians.