(http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/MSNBC/Components/Photo/_new/121005-tolar-hs-riley.photoblog600.jpg)Tom Pennington / Getty ImagesResidents of Tolar, Texas, attend a candlelight vigil Wednesday at the old Tolar High School football field to honor hometown Army Special Forces soldier Sgt. 1st Class Riley G. Stephens.By Bill Briggs, NBC News contributorWhen No. 2,000 fell last weekend in Afghanistan, journalists were keeping count. But is the nation keeping up?
Follow @NBCNewsUS (http://twitter.com/NBCNewsUS)Sunday marks the 11-year anniversary of the first American missile strikes against terrorist and Taliban targets inside Afghanistan. The U.S. military death toll has ticked ever slowly upward from the war's launch in October 2001 as a globally watched (http://video.msnbc.msn.com/nightly-news/49246586#4924658) counterattack to 9/11 through the height of the Iraq War when service members in Afghanistan darkly dubbed their own battleground “Forgot-istan.”
Last Saturday, Sgt. 1st Class Riley G. Stephens, 39, was shot and killed by an Afghan National Army soldier at a highway checkpoint in Wardak Province. The Airborne Special Forces member had three children and a wife. Residents in his tiny hometown, Tolar, Texas, gathered Wednesday night on the local high school football field, burning candles in his honor.
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The sooner the US pull out the better for them.