Latest US deaths put focus on war policy

Taliban attack that left six Americans dead a sign of deepening crisis in Afghanistan

Adeeply conflicted United States President Barack Obama warned earlier this year when he extended the American troop presence in Afghanistan that he did not support “the idea of endless war”. For Obama, the deaths of six US soldiers near Bagram airbase underscores the perils of his decision to keep as many as 9800 troops in Afghanistan through much of next year.

A war that Obama had pledged to end before he left office is now increasingly looking endless. That war followed him to his native Hawaii, where he is on a two-week holiday with his wife and daughters.

Last month, he lashed out at critics urging him to do more militarily in Iraq and Syria, saying he wouldn’t send US forces into combat just to look “tough”. “Part of the reason is because every few months I go to Walter Reed, and I see a 25-year-old kid who’s paralysed or has lost his limbs, and some of those are people I’ve ordered into battle,” Obama said.

The remarks prompted a backlash from some Republicans, who accused Obama of politicising American troops’ sacrifices.

The most recent deaths, coming just before Christmas and a few months after Obama’s decision to extend the longest war in US history, are likely to stick with the President.

His press secretary issued a statement: “The US condemns this cowardly attack on members of the US and Afghan forces, and we remain committed to supporting the Afghan people and their Government.”

The Taliban attack killed six ser- vice members near Kabul, US officials said, in the latest sign of deepening violence across Afghanistan and the risks facing Obama’s plan to leave the most intense fighting to local forces.

US military officials said the attack, the most deadly insurgent assault on American forces in at least three years, took place a few kilometres from Bagram, when a motorbike rigged with explosives detonated and hit a group of US troops attending a meeting with local figures.

The attack comes as the Afghan Government struggles to beat back a series of large-scale Taliban offensives and contain a nascent campaign by militants linked to Isis (Islamic State).

The Pentagon said the blast wounded two other US service members and a contractor. Three Afghan police officials were also injured.

In recent months, Afghan security forces have been overwhelmed by a series of militant offensives revealing the Government’s vulnerability when it doesn’t have substantial foreign firepower to support it.

It took local forces several weeks to reclaim Kunduz, a major city that was overrun by Taliban forces. This month, militants have mounted a deadly siege on an airport in the southern province of Kandahar and launched a suicide assault on a diplomatic complex in Kabul.

Yesterday, the group also said it had taken Sangin, a district of Helmand province that once symbolised the success of Obama’s decision to send additional US forces in 2010. Elon Musk's SpaceX successfully landed the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket at its landing pad in Cape Canaveral in its first flight since its rocket exploded six months ago.

The historic landing, the first time a rocket launched a payload into orbit and then returned safely to Earth, was cheered as a sign that SpaceX, the darling of the commercial space industry, has its momentum back.

“The Falcon has landed,” a SpaceX commentator said on the live webcast.

Yesterday flight, initially delayed because of technical concerns, was the second time in a month that a billionaire-backed venture launched a rocket into space and recovered it.

And it represents yet another significant step forward in the quest to open up the cosmos to the masses.

Typically, rocket boosters are used once, burning up or crashing into the ocean after liftoff.

But Musk, the billionaire cofounder of PayPal and Tesla, and Jeffrey Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com who has his own space company, have been working on creating reusable rockets that land vertically by using their engine thrust. If they are able to recover rockets and fly them again and again, it would dramatically lower the cost of space flight.

Reusing the first stage, which houses the engine and is the most expensive part of the rocket, was thought impossible by many just a few years ago. But last month Bezos' Blue Origin flew a rocket to the edge of space, and landed it in a remote swath of West Texas.

Yesterday, in SpaceX's first flight since its Falcon 9 rocket blew up in June, Musk topped his fellow tech billionaire and space rival, by landing a larger, more powerful rocket