04-07-2013, 06:43 PM
Black wrote:
[quote=Lemon Drop]
Hopefully we'll have diplomats in Afghanistan long after the troops have left. I admire this young woman and what she was trying to do and how she wanted to represent our country.
I was making a dig at the Benghazi nuts, who will no doubt barely take notice of this latest death in the middle east, since there is no looming election.
A case could be made (or not) that this shows the President is right not to withdraw troops too hastily, as this country is obviously still unstable and violent.
Then there's this, to make the heart sink even more...
At least 10 Afghan children were killed Saturday in a joint military operation by Afghan and NATO forces, according to two Afghan officials.
Not sure what this thread is about-- the link in the top post only goes to a story about the children being killed.
Fighting has intensified in Afghanistan recently as the weather has warmed up and the so-called fighting season has kicked into gear. On Saturday, a suicide bomber attacked a convoy of Afghan and United States officials in Zabul Province, killing three American soldiers and two civilians, including Anne Smedinghoff, a 25-year-old diplomat in the public affairs division of the State Department. Another employee remains in critical condition.
In an emotional eulogy to the staff and families of the American Consulate in Istanbul, Secretary of State John Kerry talked on Sunday about Ms. Smedinghoff, from Illinois.
Mr. Kerry said Ms. Smedinghoff had previously served in Venezuela. He deplored the “harsh contradiction” of her death, which occurred as the Americans were bringing books to a school.
“The folks who want to kill people, and that is all they want to do, are scared of knowledge,” Mr. Kerry said. “They want to shut the doors, and they don’t want people to make their choices about their future.”
That incident, the deadliest for Americans in Afghanistan this year,