Ending the War in Afghanistan
by: Alana Yu-lan Price on October 8th, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Will the “war on terror” never end?
Back in 2001, just after September 11, my college classmates and I traveled to Washington to protest the impending invasion of Afghanistan. We all knew that military retaliation was around the corner, and we dreaded the years of violence and bloodshed to follow. We wanted to tell our government that launching a war was not the way to make us feel safe. And we wanted the United States to think twice before raining bombs on civilians and giving millions a new reason to hate us.
It is deeply painful, eight years later, to witness not the end but the escalation of this war. In his op-ed in today’s San Francisco Chronicle, Tikkun editor Michael Lerner lays out a compelling case for why we should end the war:
The escalation of war in Afghanistan may be only a stalking horse for an even larger war in Pakistan as the United States seeks to secure the nukes there that might fall into the hands of terrorists. These newly proposed wars are only the Obama phase of what is likely to be an endless 21st-century crusade called “the war on terrorism.”
Yet what we justifiably fear — terrorists acquiring a nuclear weapon and detonating it in the United States — cannot be prevented by the United States imposing itself on one country after another in the Middle East or elsewhere. A more plausible strategy is to address the grievances and problems that lead people to want to strike out against the West in general, and the United States in particular … It’s time to abandon the strategy of global domination (military, economic or cultural) and seek homeland security through an ethos of generosity and genuine caring for the well-being of everyone on the planet and of the planet itself.
He also calls on San Francisco residents to urge Obama to say “no” to the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan when they see him at the St. Francis Hotel on October 15.
You can read the full op-ed on the Chronicle‘s website.
Alana, I fully agree with you. I voted for Obama in part because I believed he would be able to get us out of this quagmire. He knows that no invader can win in Afghanistan. So why does he want to escalate? Fear. Fear narrows our vision, and as a result, gives us many fewer options. We need more options, and I think that Michael Lerner’s op-ed piece points in that direction.
Ann Jones, humanitarian aid worker and author of “Kabul in Winter” recently wrote from Kabul, Afghanistan:
“I’ve come back to the Afghan capital again, after an absence of two years, to find it ruined in a new way. Not by bombs this time, but by security.The heart of the city is now hidden behind piles of Hescos giant, grey sandbags produced somewhere in Great Britain. They’re stacked against the walls of government buildings, U.N. agencies, embassies, NGO offices, and army camps (of which there are a lot) — and they only seem to grow and multiply…What’s called security generates fear.
“How Lies Begat Illusions Begat Lies…you can’t understand the Taliban without knowing about America’s covert operations in the region in the 1980s. Back then, President Ronald Reagan’s administration, mainly through the CIA, used the Pakistani Intelligence services to fund, arm, and train Afghan and foreign Islamist jihadis to defeat the Soviet army in Afghanistan. Pakistan subsequently used “channels built with U.S. money” to install in Afghanistan a friendly government — the Taliban.
“Later, after the George W. Bush administration invaded the country and the U.S. ousted the Taliban, it installed Hamid Karzai as president and returned many of the old Islamist jihadis to power in his government. Thus, this peculiar, well-established fact underlies the current war in Afghanistan: the United States sponsored both sides.
“As I write, 4,000 newly arrived U.S. Marines are trudging through the blistering heat of Helmand Province to push back the Taliban so local Pashtuns can turn out to vote next month for Karzai, their fellow Pashtun. What’s wrong with this new Obama strategy? For one thing, in some areas the local Pashtun population has instead turned out to fight against the foreign invaders, side by side with the Taliban (who, it should be remembered, are mostly local Pashtuns). They’re as fed up as anybody with the puppet Karzai. Like millions of other Afghans, they say Karzai has done nothing for the people. But saddled with history, Karzai remains the horse the U.S. rode in on.
“Only the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission has called, year after year, for a moral accounting. Its surveys of Afghan citizens consistently find that the people want lasting peace, and to attain it, they would prefer some sort of truth and reconciliation procedure, like the one that took place in South Africa, to cleanse the country and set it on an honest intellectual and moral footing.”
The Hescos of Afganastan and the twelve foot high concrete walls in Baghdad that divide the Sunni and Shia populations are dwarfed by the 30ft high concrete ones in the ‘Holy’ Land; which is in pieces, Bantustans.
All the builders of these barriers and walls claim that they are democracies and that the walls are all about Security.
All builders of these barriers and walls exhibit the schizophrenic discipline of thinking two contradictory truths at the same time. Coined by George Orwell in “1984″ as ‘doublethink’ the Ministry of Peace wages war, the Ministry of Truth fabricates lies and the Ministry of Love tortures and kills any it deems threatening.
Most threatening of all for Big Brother are those with independent thought!
Excerpted from “To all the Sharp Dressed Soldiers Shipping Out”
http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1343&Itemid=222