A Week of Intense Activity: A Challenge to Carry it Further

By Debra Sweet  

Tuesday I was on Anti-war Radio with Scott Horton and Angela Keaton. As an announcement for the show read, “Debra Sweet, Director of World Can’t Wait, discusses the post-Obama antiwar movement collapse, the strange confluence of The Feminist Majority and the Bush administration in selling the War in Afghanistan, the laughable notion that the Pentagon can be used to secure human rights, Afghan warlords allied with the Karzai government whose human rights records are no better than the Taliban‘s and how activists can make their voices heard on antiwar issues.”

Listen here.

In an early evening edition of the San Francisco Chronicle Thursday, coverage of the Obama fundraiser there included: “Mike Dean of San Francisco, with the left-wing group World Can’t Wait, paid tribute to Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize with a huge poster showing the president wearing a medallion inscribed ‘Orwell War Is Peace 2009’.”

This weekend there were antiwar marches and rallies in 45 cities.  This date was chosen because 40 years ago, October 15, 1969, Vietnam Moratorium marches happened around the country. 

An announcement on expanding the occupation of Afghanistan from the Obama adminstration may come any moment.  Wednesday, reports predicted they will expand the war by 45,000 troops.  Today, I’ve heard that General McChrystal says that’s the least he could work with, and that the expansion could be 80,000 troops.  A brigade out of Ft Drum in upstate NY has just had its orders for Iraq cancelled, possibly to be re-directed to Afghanistan.

Only the US doesn’t have 80,000 troops ready to go to war… 

This makes the work World Can’t Wait has been doing in bringing veterans into high schools even more crucial.  Youth who are being heavily recruited, and pressured by the recession, need to hear the reality of what these occupations mean.  wearenotyoursoldiers.org  We could do a lot more with funds to reach teachers, and stipends for veterans to spend a day spilling their stories.  Donate to this project here!

Think this is all a bit abstract and far off?  In the Army Times this week, it’s reported that Wichita KS public schools are looking to bring in a new Army program into their middle schools because "The Army’s got a lot deeper pockets than education." Eleven year olds need to be prepared for Afghanistan duty in 2016.  Army considers middle-school JROTC program.