In the forgotten war, the one not in Iraq, but aimed far more surely from the beginning at real terrorists and at those responsible for 9/11 and other major international terrorist attac ks in Bali, Madrid and London, US forces suffered significant casualties yesterday. The attack occured along the border with Pakistan, a country that still isn’t standing up and helping very vigorously to stamp out radical islamic and Taliban terrorists in its territory. Sure, US and NATO forces killed 40 of the Taliban forces, but with a stronger presence from the beginning in Afghanistan, before Bush and Cheney’s Wild Adventure in Iraq, we surely would be farther along in handling that part of the world, Afghanistan, where the real terrorists are based. From the AP, via the Philadelphia Inquirer:

U.S. officials say militant attacks in Afghanistan are becoming more complex, intense and better coordinated than a year ago. Monthly death tolls of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan surpassed U.S. military deaths in Iraq in May and June. And last Monday, a suicide bomber attacked the Indian Embassy in Kabul, killing 58 people in the deadliest attack in the Afghan capital since 2001.

U.S. officials are considering drawing down additional forces from Iraq in coming months, in part because of less violence in Iraq and the need for additional U.S. troops in Afghanistan. U.S. officials have said they need at least three more brigades in Afghanistan , or more than 10,000 troops.

NATO confirmed nine of its soldiers had been killed and 15 wounded. A Western official said the nine dead were Americans, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the troops’ nationalities. Four Afghan soldiers also were wounded, NATO said.

The attack was the deadliest for U.S. troops in Afghanistan since June 2005, when 16 American troops were killed , also in Kunar province , when their helicopter was shot down by a rocket-propelled grenade.

The latest assault came at a time of rising violence in Afghanistan. Also on Sunday, a suicide bomber targeting a police patrol killed 24 people, including 19 civilians, while U.S. coalition and Afghan soldiers killed 40 militants elsewhere in the south.

Many of us over the last seven years have argued that the Bush Administration has ignored that country in favor of a stupid invasion of Iraq based on false pretenses. Barack Obama has been one to make that argument, and his comments today stress that he wishes to listen to those Generals who want to see the focus shift to chasing down and killing or capturing the real terrorists in Afghanistan. Obama made his comments yesterday, and here they are from the New York Times:

“As president, I would pursue a new strategy, and begin by providing at least two additional combat brigades to support our effort in Afghanistan,” Mr. Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, wrote in an Op-Ed article published on Monday in The New York Times. “We need more troops, more helicopters, better intelligence-gathering and more nonmilitary assistance to accomplish the mission there.”

Mr. Obama, who is among those who maintain that Afghanistan has been neglected because of the administration’s Iraq policy, has not previously offered such a specific plan for how to strengthen troop levels in Afghanistan. His proposal comes as he prepares to visit American commanders to assess progress in Iraq and needs in Afghanistan.

He said a new round of violence on Sunday, in which nine American soldiers died in fierce fighting with the Taliban in eastern Afghanistan, underscored the military challenges ahead for the United States. He said in a news conference here, “It’s very hard for us to bolster our forces in Afghanistan when we have such a heavy presence in Iraq.”

As the Bush administration considers withdrawing additional combat troops from Iraq in September, the military needs in Afghanistan are coming into sharper focus. Mr. Obama and other Democrats have said the balance of troops in the two war zones should be adjusted. At the same time, a downturn in Iraqi violence has complicated their arguments that a surge of American troops was flawed.

“I continue to believe that we’re under-resourced in Afghanistan,” Mr. Obama said on Sunday, speaking to reporters after addressing a Latino group here. “That is the real center for terrorist activity that we have to deal with and deal with aggressively.”

Now there’s an advocate for change. I’ve been on this blog and in the Left Blogzome for over four years now. Too often the sentiment is for the US to stay away from all military conflict. I suppose some of this is allied with the Cindy Sheehan wing of the anti-Iraq movement, a group that wants to keep our soldiers out of any engagements. I do not and never have subscribed to such an isolationist stand. First, I believe that we should avenge 9/11, and the place to do that is in Afghanistan. More important still is making sure another 9/11 doesn’t happen, and being active with overwhelming force in Afghanistan is the best way we can pursue that goal. Finally, though the Bush Administration has squandered its responsibility in that regard, we are the leader in military power in this world, and the responsibility is great. We’ve got some signs here that Barack Obama would exercise that responsibility far better than the Bush Administration, and his leadership might actually embolden those who stood with Bush nearly seven years ago just after 9/11. He might just get more commitment from the Brits, the French, the Germans and the rest of the NATO members. That would be a great thing, not just for the Afghanistan situation, but for the future of world peace.

We need in this world a multinational force that is not impotent. We need a multinational force like NATO that, if led by someone other than the numbnut Bush, could respond to a Darfur, to an Afghanistan, to the Tamil rebels in Sri Lanka — (add your least favorite bloodbath against civilians here.) We’ve got a couple futures in this world, in the broadest of senses. We the strongest countries in the world, can sit back and impotently whine about Zimbabwe or Darfur, and therefore allow crimes against humanity to go virtually unchecked. To that end, we’ll be relying on insipid celebrities to stand up and speak out, thus making us feel good that someone cares. Or, we can strengthen international military alliances so that the world can respond to these sorts of horrors swiftly and decisively. We’ve got a far better chance of the latter with Barack Obama than we do with John McCain.