Home for the holidays: Fewer US troops are absent this year

Christmas 2012 marks the smallest deployment of combat troops abroad in at least five years, as the war in Iraq ends and US forces deployed to Afghanistan have been drawing down.

|
Musadeq Sadeq/AP
A US Army chaplain leads a Christmas service for deployed soldiers in Kabul, Afghanistan. This year has the fewest number of troops deployed overseas in at least the last five years.

When President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama issued a special holiday greeting over the weekend to US troops fighting overseas, they were addressing the smallest deployment of combat troops in at least five years.

“This week let’s give thanks for our veterans and their families,” the president said. “And let’s say a prayer for all our troops – especially those in Afghanistan – who are spending this holiday overseas, risking their lives to defend the freedoms we hold dear.” Mr. Obama added that the number of troops in harm’s way is coming down, because “the war in Iraq is over [and] the transition in Afghanistan is under way.”

The number of troops in Afghanistan is at its lowest level since the “surge” of about 35,000 troops, ordered by Obama in December 2009, took the total over 100,000. [Editor's note: The original version of this paragraph gave an incorrect year for the surge of troops into Afghanistan.]

With Obama, who will take the oath of office for a second term on Jan. 21, pledging to bring America’s “decade of war” to an end, the number of combat troops deployed overseas is likely to continue shrinking.

Still, such holiday messages to the troops are likely to remain on the president’s agenda for years to come. Still to be decided are the pace of the drawdown of the remaining 66,000 US troops in Afghanistan and the size of any residual US force in Afghanistan after most NATO and US personnel leave at the end of 2014.

That’s not to mention other crises, from Syria to Iran, that might spark some form of US military intervention.

Then, as Mrs. Obama emphasized in the video greeting, there are the 2.4 million veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and their families, who will continue to require services beyond holiday acknowledgments from the president.

“Our military families sacrifice so much on our behalf, and Barack and I believe that we should serve them as well as they serve this country,” she said, drawing attention to the “Joining Forces” effort that she and Jill Biden, wife of the vice president, have spearheaded to engage Americans in supporting military families.

In the meantime, thousands of combat troops – some on their third or fourth deployments – are spending another Christmas and New Year's away from their families, some decorating mini Christmas trees on their bases or wearing red-and-white Santa caps to kindle the holiday spirit.

While Obama focused on troops in his greeting, military personnel are not the only ones on hazardous foreign duty this holiday season. On Monday, an Afghan policewoman shot and killed a US civilian police adviser in the latest in an uptick of so-called “insider” attacks.

In 2012, more than 60 foreign military and civilian personnel, most of them Americans, have been killed by Afghan security forces. A major thrust of the US work in Afghanistan is to prepare Afghans to assume responsibility for their country’s security needs by 2014.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Home for the holidays: Fewer US troops are absent this year
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Military/2012/1225/Home-for-the-holidays-Fewer-US-troops-are-absent-this-year
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe