(CNSNews.com) - Twelve years ago today, nineteen al Qaeda terrorists hijacked four U.S. commercial airliners and flew them into the World Trade Towers, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania.
In the war that Congress authorized against al Qaeda only three days after that attack, the vast majority of the U.S. casualties have occurred in the last four and a half years during the presidency of Barack Obama.
In fact, according to the CNSNews.com database of U.S. casualties in Afghanistan, 73 percent of all U.S. Afghan War casualties have occurred since Jan. 20, 2009 when Obama was inaugurated.
The 91 U.S. casualties in Afghanistan so far in 2013 are more than those that occurred in the first two full calendar years of the war (2002 and 2003) combined, when 30 and 31 U.S. troops were killed there.
On Sept. 14, 2001, Congress approved a resolution authorizing the president “to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons.”
By October 2001, U.S. forces were engaged in Afghanistan, seeking to remove al Qaeda from the sanctuary it had used there to launch the Sept. 11, 2001 attack.
Since then, most of the leaders and participants in the 9/11 terrorist attacks have been killed or captured. But the United States not only remains at war in Afghanistan, it continues to suffer significant casualties there.
In total, 2,144 U.S. military personnel have given their lives fighting in and around Afghanistan as part of Operation Enduring Freedom.
1,575 of the U.S. military personnel who have sacrificed their lives in this cause were killed during the presidency of Barack Obama.
That means 73 percent of the casualties in the Afghan War have happened on Barack Obama’s watch.
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