6 Reasons to Oppose the War in Afghanistan
by Brian Lenzo | Sunday, February 22nd, 2009

‘President Barack Obama approved adding some 17,000 U.S. troops for the flagging war in Afghanistan, his first significant move to change the course of a conflict that his closest military advisers have warned the United States is not winning…

About 8,000 Marines are expected to go in first, followed by about 9,000 Army troops. Some 34,000 U.S. troops are already in Afghanistan.’

So reported by MSNBC on February 17th, 2009.  The “war that dare not speak its name” is now officially Obama’s War.  We are indeed, in a new era of change, hope, and possibilities.  But as Karl Marx aptly points out, “The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living.”

Obama has inherited not just one, but two failed wars: Iraq and Afghanistan.  Iraq has been reduced from one of the most industrialized and advanced nations in the Middle East, to a country with an average of 3-4 hours of electricity available per day.  Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Iraqi’s have been killed, injured or displaced.

Afghanistan has fared little better, but the cost there is little known to western audiences. They are, indeed, nightmares, for the soldiers stuck patrolling far away neighborhoods, for the families of those soldiers maimed and killed, and most importantly, for the people of Iraq and Afghanistan.

The war in Iraq is an unmitigated disaster and is rightly opposed by a solid majority of the American public, not to mention the rest of the world.  The Bush administration’s stated reasons for invasion and the toppling of its government has been exposed as a pack of lies.  However, the reasons for the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan are poorly understood and even more poorly opposed by our American antiwar movement.

Far from a simple crime of omission, the failure of our movement to stand in solidarity with the people of Afghanistan is a crippling weight, a restrictive chain, on the brewing, international movement against the neo-liberal nightmares of the past 30 years.  To paraphrase a popular slogan, “What happens in the US antiwar movement, will not stay relegated to the US antiwar movement.”  A strong, unapologetic stand in solidarity with the people of Afghanistan and against the US “Global War on Terror” would send a strong message to all movements across the world.  To quote Mark Twain, it is our duty as citizens of the empire to oppose “having the eagle put its talons on any other land.”

Its time we broke through this paralysis so that we can chart a clear path to a world worth living in.  Its time American’s woke up from this nightmare and expose the occupation of Afghanistan as one part of a broader war, against both Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine.

The following are 6 reasons to oppose the War in Afghanistan.  It is the preface to a 6 part series where I will explain each point, in depth.

1. The 9/11 terrorist attacks were merely a pre-text to launch an offensive with the aim of strengthening US dominance in central asia.

2. Far from liberated, women in Afghanistan are worse off than before the invasion.

3. The biggest source of violence and instability in Afghanistan is not the Taliban or Al-Qeda, it’s the US military and its “Global War on Terrorism.”

4. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are costing the US and other “coalition” countries trillions of dollars and will only deepen the economic crisis at home and abroad.

5. The notion that Western nations need to “nation-build” or secure “failed-states” is only a modern incarnation of the “White Man’s Burden.”

6. Afghanistan has historically been an “imperial playground” for world powers and remains so under US occupation.

Tags: Afghanistan, Antiwar, Iraq, movement, obama, Palestine, Rochester, war, War on Terror

11:07 am. Activism, Politics.