As President Obama deliberates escalation in Afghanistan, it is wise to consider the balance of the 9/11 civilian casualties against the military and civilian casualties in Afghanistan, in seven years of meandering destruction.

Al-Qaida murdered 2,995 people on Sept. 11, 2001. As of today, 746 U. S. troops have been killed in Afghanistan and 2,238 have been seriously injured. An estimated 7,589 Afghanistan civilians have been killed. An estimated 13,660 have been seriously injured.

In this war of retribution for 9/11, and in its supposed interest in preventing further outrages of that kind, it has already accomplished several times the death and suffering. The casualty numbers refute the president’s recent assertion of this as a “war of necessity.” The killing now, in relation to its provocation, is gratuitous in the extreme.

Vice President Biden would now implement anti-personnel strategies (drones) in Pakistan, only compounding the absurdity of aimless destruction of life, and persist in the error of military action of any kind in the effort to combat, not an organized, national military force, but rather the tactical use of terror by a rogue, stateless enemy. If terror is defined as the assault on civilians for political or military purposes, the U. S. action in Afghanistan fully meets such a criterion.

Bring in the police, prevent and prosecute the terror (constitutionally) and end the wars.

Robert Sandgrund

Buffalo