The big news story of the weekend on into today, aside from the rock band that got bird-bombed off the stage (everyone's a critic), is the release of 91,000 classified documents pertaining to the Afghanistan War.  Some Aussie or Kiwi or Brit...one of those accents...who runs his own wiki-site is behind it;  he is anti-war to the max.
The most disturbing piece of the story is the suspected source of the leak.  Okay, 91,000 documents is a significant leak...I agree.  But the fact is that there are some documents that even this evil, twisted, souless, brown-water-and-methane excuse for a human being  won't release (I suspect the real reason is because they don't support his claims of US wickedness and criminal actions). He feels justified in endangering all the Coalition soldiers in the theater -as if they weren't already in danger - as his contribution to our enlightenment.  Hey, Bozo!! You're so worried about criminal behavior...how about the exposure of 91,000 classified documents?  Huh?
Anyway, one of the many pieces on this story today mentioned that the suspected leaker is an analyst in the LA area who HAS LEAKED DOCS TO THIS SAME ABOVE-MENTIONED ANAL APERTURE BEFORE.  Huh?  Double Huh??  Pray tell, if the leaker has leaked before, and they know who it is, why is the leaker still in a position to leak some more?  I am not in charge of an intelligence outfit, in fact, for a lot of my adult life, I felt I was in charge of just the opposite.  But dumb as I am, I could figure out that a fella who couldn't be trusted with secure information probably ought not to be allowed access to any more secure information.  But that's just me.  Sigh.
Now, as for the information that was released...the stuff that is supposed to shock us all into immediate repentance, throwing up our hands and down our arms, running back within our own borders to quake and moan in rue of our dastardly acts...what is really in there?  A lot of the docs are summaries of contacts and after action reports.  Some of them contain information about civilians who got killed...some kids, even...these are the shocking facts that Americans just cannot handle.  I am thinking that he just might be right about that.  It does seem that a lot of our countrymen are just looking for an excuse to pick up our football and go home.  And if you are one who cannot stomach the "terrible slaughter" of non-combatants in a war zone, you may want to skip to the last paragraph so as to not be offended by what I have to say next...still there?  Okay...ya been warned.  
I have heard some of the anti-war lefties spout out large numbers of civilian casualties in Iraq and Afghan.  Some as high as 100,000.  This number boggles the mind in todays world.  But just a generation ago or two, Winnie Churchill and Frank Roosevelt put together a campaign to destroy Germany...not just the German Army, Navy, and Luftwaffe...but the whole nation.  Destroy their will to resist.  Bomb their cities and factories and farms and villages.  The city of Dresden, a place famous for production of "wartime" porcelain, was engulfed in a firestorm so intense that many thousands of people were so throroughly incinerated that no trace of them was ever found.  At the end of the war, the estimates were in the area of 200,000 dead...this year a study has estimated the losses at about one tenth of that.  I tend to lean toward the higher numbers.  Those pesky potters.  Hamburg, famous for its port and hookers, was also treated to a firestorm.  A firestorm is more than just setting a town on fire.  In a firestorm, the heat becomes so intense that it creates a draft and feeds on all the oxygen, leaving none for the living things.  So along with the disappeared and the burned, many thousands died of asphyxiation...and then burned.  These firestorms were the most famous, although not the only ones.  RAF devised a method of creating these storms with a combination of high exposives and incendiary bombs...in other words...we did it on purpose.  The goal?  To destroy population centers, put refugees on the roads, clog up the infrastucture, destroy morale and the will to carry on the war.
The town of Pforzheim, on the edge of the Black Forest, is one of my favorite places to visit.  In 1945 it was visited with a minor firestorm that took about 18,000 lives (I will explain why I think the count is much higher in a minute).  It was a place where jewelry and clocks and textiles were made.  Strategically, those industries could support the military with correct time and uniforms.  I lived in Mannheim for a few years. It is a big transportation center:  highways, railroads, and the Rhine River port.  Right across the river is Ludwigshafen, home of one of the biggest chemical plants in Germany.  Neither is a very large city; together they are smaller in land mass than Frankfurt, for example.  But each was alloted the same amount of bombweight as the other cities...which means that in that area they actually got twice as many bombs as some much larger cities.  The Brits even designed a special bomb to bust out the dams on the Ruhr River to try and flood the industrial complex.
Some cities were designated "dump zones".  If a bomb mission couldn't make their planned targets, they could drop on these "dump zones" on the way home, or if a plane was damaged and had to get rid of its bomb load to get back, "dump zone".  That is why I don't think the casualty estimates are low.  In some cases there is just no way to tell how many people were housed in these cities...Pforzheim, for example, made it to the bomb list late in the game and a lot of folks who had been bombed out of Karlsruhe and Stuttgart were probably with relatives in a town they thought might be safe.  The same is true for so many stats;  Germany really has no idea exactly how many of their soldiers were killed on the Eastern front or held prisoner in Russia...I have heard an estimate that between 300,000 to 600,000 German civilians were killed during the war.  That is a pretty big spread.
So much for that...how about Japan?  Never mind the whole bombing campaign, just the last couple weeks of the war...Hiroshima suffered 50-80,000 immediate deaths (again, no one knows for sure) and Nagasaki about 40,000...but they kept dying for months afterward from radiation and burns.And speaking of firestorms,  in March of 1945 during one raid on Tokyo, nearly 100,000 died in one night.  Again, a low-ball estimate; over a million people lived in the 16 square miles that were destroyed.
Well, the beat goes on.  World War Two lasted about six years.  Estimates of total dead for the war range from 50 to 70 million...two thirds of that were civilians. After the war, millions still would die from radiation, starvation, disease, suicide, and executions.  It was a bloody, dangerous, and deadly war.  Was it necessary?  Well...do you speak German?  Japanese?  Our freedoms,  way of life, our very existance as a nation were at risk.  Losing was not an option.  
So, Big Fat Daddy...what is your point?  War sucks.  It sucks hard for those who are up close and personal with it.  It also sucks pretty hard for those who have to wage it with on eye on the enemy and the other looking over their shoulder for the politicians who will use any excuse to jump in front of a camera and condemn the warfighters for every supposed infraction of some untenable Rule of Engagement.  Well, we have been assured that any allegations will be thoroughly investigated and carefully considered before any action is taken...by the same folks who play on-again-off-again jobs with "racist/nonracist" empolyees, condemn Philly Police for "acting stupidly"...and see nothing wrong with a vacation in Maine after telling us all to enjoy the Gulf Shores.  Like I said, if the numbers of Afghanis who get caught in a crossfire bothers you...you might just be part of the problem.
It seems that our troops always have to explain their actions.  They are held under a magnifying glass at every turn.  Why?  I assure you that you often do not have an opportunity to consult JAG every time the poo-poo gets in the propeller.  The press alters field reports to make soldiers look like they are criminals, congressmen deride them with no evidence (other than the news reports).  Still, there they are...volunteers all...out on the sharp end of the stick, putting it all on the line because they understand what is at stake;  they are willing to do what most would not.  We put them in that position, we ask them to watch our backs;  to keep us safe.  They live a life so austere that most could not even imagine it...for us.  We tell them to destroy the enemies of America and defend our shores.  Then we let our politicians second-guess them. There is a war in Afghanistan...Afghanis are dying and that is a tragedy. Americans are dying, too...and worse, on the home front, Americans are losing their heart.