1 in 5 U,S. combat deaths in Afghanistan caused by Afghan security forces

 it's the war that keeps on taking...U.S. lives, Afghan lives...and that we barely notice anymore.  Come on, do something.  From United for Peace and Justice.

One in five U.S. combat deaths in Afghanistan this year were caused by Afghan security forces who turned their American-provided weapons on their U.S. “allies”.  The recently publicized horrors in Afghanistan committed by U.S. soldiers are not exceptions but sadly reflect the cumulative effect of war and occupation.   

The situation is so bad that we now fear that the Afghan security forces, our supposed partners, will kill U.S. soldiers while they sleep. In order to protect the troops from their Afghan colleagues who live and work on their bases, Gen. John Allen has assigned U.S. soldiers, called “guardian angels,” to guard sleeping troops.  What more needs to be said?  This insanity must end now.  

Americans are overwhelmingly against the war in Afghanistan – a recent CBS poll shows a record 69% of Americans think the U.S. should not be involved in Afghanistan.   Click Here to tell President Obama, your Senators and House Representative to listen to the American people - we want our troops home now.  

In good conscience, how can anyone ask the troops, who we are told are fighting for us, to continue to risk their lives, limbs and emotional well being for this endless, futile war?  The troops don’t get to choose the wars they fight.  We must not expect them to sacrifice for no good reason.  It is our responsibility and duty to demand our politicians end this war.  Silence is an affirmation for continued war.  

Click Here to tell President Obama, your Senators and House Representative that we want our troops home now!  Ask them to co-sponsor HR 780 in the House, and introduce parallel legislation in the Senate.  HR. 780, the Responsible End to the War in Afghanistan Act, would end combat operations in Afghanistan and limit funding to the safe and orderly withdrawal of all U.S. troops and military contractors.  Or call your member of Congress toll-free at 877-429-0678.

The military strategy has failed.  The illusion that there can be a military victory in Afghanistan has prevented the vital diplomacy necessary to bring about a regional solution in Afghanistan while decimating our economy.  Everybody is losing.      

We need to keep the pressure on our president & elected officials – they need to listen to the American people.   The vast majority of Americans want:   

· a safe and swift troop withdrawal

· a diplomatic surge bringing stability to Afghanistan and the region

· take warlords, drug lords and the Taliban off US payrolls

This bloody, bloody war

We're on a countdown to the end of the Iraq war, but almost  no one seems to notice.

Nine years of war: what has it cost us?  What have we gained?

In lives: As of today, 4801 coalition forces have been killed, 4483 of them U.S. military members.  Official estimates say 32,200 have been injured, but some estimates put that number closer to 100,000.  Many of those injuries are brain injuries and amputations that will affect those injured for the rest of their lives.


On the Iraqi side, more than 100,000 civilian deaths have been documented, but Just Foreign Policy, Lancet and other place the number at more than a million.  The number of injured is undocumented.

In money: The official tally stands at $800 billion-- that's $3000 a second—for the duration of the war.  These are direct costs, however, and don't include the cost of replacing equipment, vehicles and weapons, and the cost of providing health care and other benefits for veterans.  That could push the cost to about $4 trillion.

I won't put all the blame for the recession on the war, but, in these times, can you imagine the number of jobs that could have been created with that money? 

What have we gained?   Only the most cynical would say that the fall of dictator Saddam Hussein justifies what we have lost.  A few might claim that Iraq paved the way for the Arab Spring, but I'd be more inclined to say that the people would have overthrown Hussein  themselves by now.  

Can anyone think of even one other benefit from this bloody, bloody war?

Anti-war activists called this war before it happened.  We saw the handwriting on the wall on 9/11, we tried to stop it and when we couldn't, we tried to bring it to an early end, and we couldn't do that, either.  the last few years the energy of the anti-war movement has been sapped by a misguided faith in Barack Obama.   Maybe we're just tired.  Or maybe we're coming to believe that everything must change before there can be no more wars.   


For more than nine years, Arise has vigiled every Monday at noon in front of the Federal Building in Springfield. We've had a half dozen major demonstrations there, joined by anti-war activists from around the Valley.  On snowy or rainy days, maybe the numbers get as low as four, but usually there's a dozen or more people.   We'll mark the end of this war in some way before the end of the year.  But we will continue to vigil.


There's still Afghanistan.

We haven't forgotten about war

Yesterday I was quite giddy about this news of the Merkley amendment passing the Senate on a voice vote. The very day before the Senate -- to their great discredit -- had added dangerous new powers to the Military in the ever-escalating war on terrorism.

Where did my giddiness come from? I have found these last couple of days to be very upsetting ones in terms of U.S. war policy. Monday morning began with our local paper's front page announcement of a local National Guard contingent of engineers being sent off to Afghanistan for the next year. Their assignment? To clear roads of explosive devices. Will they come back to us? Will their bodies and their minds be whole?

Adding to my upset was knowing that every day the U.S. Senate was on the verge of passing on an obscene War Budget of nearly $ 700,000,000,000 for just one fiscal year. All dedicated to Killing -- or the Threat of killing -- to keep our top-dog position throughout the planet.

Then came the whopper. Embedded in the War Budget was a more frightening commitment to an already out-of-control escalated Anti-Terrorism policy (and what is that stipulation doing in a $$$ appropriation bill anyhow? Is there no Rules Committee in the Senate?) But it came to the floor and passed with 61 votes! The U.S. Senate moved a little closer to facism where THE U.S. MILITARY can summarily pick up a suspected terrorist & be her/his police, prosecutor, judge, and jury, putting a person away secretly and pretty much forever. The MILITARY in charge in this country. How is this different from the situation in Egypt? -- is the question I've been flinging about all week.
A lot of us were despondent.
So when I looked at the computer after dinner and saw that the Merkley Amendment had passed by a voice vote, I was astonished and delighted.
By the time I went to bed still trying to process all this, I was left with two explanations. The Senate needs a cover-up, a sop to what they will be about today (thursday) when the entire $ 600+ Blllion comes up for a vote. We citizens may well see them do what they've done before -- admonish the Pentagon and the President about the Wars one day, and then turn around the next day and vote all the money requested to execute the same wars.
I was still restless before I fell asleep. Where was this next thought coming from? Is it possible to look deeper, back into the younger days of some of these hapless Senators? Did they once glimpse what world peace, what the public good, etc. could look like? Was there an element of altruism in the voice vote yesterday afternoon?
These men and women, these Senators, so caught up in corruption on a scale never before possible in a governing body in all of history, may occasionally have a moment of collective recognition about the loss of youthful idealism. I suppose I'm thinking of the confused senior senator from my state, John Kerry, whom I often give up on, while still having a need to explain his thought processes to myself.
Is there a way to appeal to the traces of altruism in some of these Senators, instead of just denouncing them ? Still retaining the piercing insight we in the anti-war movement bring to the scene, I was wondering if I could add just a pinch of forgiveness for the human frailty of people with too much power which derives from too much money from too many unbearably ugly corporate connections in our society and the lies necessary to cover them.
What will happen today? Same old same old, most likely. How do we influence that? Drawing on the new energy of the Occupy movement and on our own inner resources and on the community we create as a movement, we can infuse our own overstressed bodies and brains and the organizations we work within to figure it out together and keep on struggling and doing what we do.
-- Sally Weiss, PDA End War and Occupations

GET OUT OF AFGHANISTAN!

So much is happening right now that I find myself fighting mad.  I'll write more about much of this later, but last night I caught a very small headline in the New York Times:  Nine Afghan Boys Collecting Firewood Killed by NATO Helicopters.  Of course, it wasn't the helicopters that killed those children, but the men in them, the governments that sent them, the contractors who built them, and every citizen of every nation who has stopped speaking out about this endless, senseless, murderous war.

General Petraeus apologized, but what good is an apology if you turn right around and do it again?  That's the nature of this war and all wars-- noncombatants die, including children who are poor and cold and who are gathering firewood to try to stay warm.

For what it's worth, here's the White House comment line, where you can leave a message for the President.

Photo of an Afghan child killed in a 2008 U.S. attack from RAWA.