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Written by: Becca Waters '11         
                Within the last month the war in Afghanistan has taken a turn, a turn for the worst. The United States and The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO, forces entered their ninth year of the War on Terror on September 20^th of this year.

                Eaton Rapids is no stranger to fearless men and women who have graduated as alumni in the past ten years and went straight off to fight in this war and it is said with deep sympathy that we have sadly had to lay some to rest due to the fighting this war brought them into.

                2010 however brought a change to the war; it is now the deadliest year the war has seen with almost 600 troops killed this year alone; according to iCasualties.com. The total number of fatalities that has plagued through the war has reached the absurd number 2,068 since the fighting began in 2001.

                The affliction here being that almost half of the fatalities were gained in 2009 and 2010. With the total number of fatalities climbing above 2,000 at a mercurial pace, more than half of the total number of deaths has been American troops.

                The end of August proclaimed a land mark in the War on Terror; we began the pull out of troops in Iraq. Iraqi insurgents played the role of cheating many of our servicemen and service women of there lives. Since the fighting began in 2001 the death toll reached the shocking number of 4,743, according to http://www.icasualties.com/, when the troop pull out began in August of 2010.

                In December of 2009 President Obama set the deadline for the pull out of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan for July of 2011. The Commander in Chief is set on July 2011 as the date for troop withdrawal but it would be very similar to the troop withdrawal in Iraq where the troops that are still in the country are acting as military advisors to the Iraqi forces.

Many advisors of the war, such as General David Petraeus the chief commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, advises the Commander in Chief that the pull out of forces should be gradual and “condition based”.

                When you compare Iraq and Afghanistan and the points that both countries are at in the war, Iraq had made copious improvements as far as deaths due to fighting in the ountry. In August, when the President began the withdrawal of forces in Iraq, fatalities had fallen dramatically. For this year our forces suffered a meager 55 fatalities compare to the 581 suffered this year alone in Afghanistan.

                It is understandable why General Petraeus is so timid of setting a date for the departure of forces in Afghanistan. Profuse improvements in Iraq were being made constantly, and most significant of all, lives weren’t being lost at such an accelerated rate as they are in Afghanistan now.

                Tragically as we watch the news we hear, on almost a daily basis, of lives being lost in Afghanistan and 2010 has been no exception to the matter. With only nine months until President Obama’s troop withdrawal is set to begin we can only hope that the fatalities will depress as we haul through what has been a never-ending war.