By Debra Sweet
There were more of us than last year, in 2009, when people widely believed the election of Barack Obama was going to end these wars. It’s important we’re out there to go against the tide.
Sunday, Obama went to Afghanistan, on dark-of-night unannounced trip to twist the arms of Hamid Karzai, the president who didn’t win the recent election, but nevertheless is the US’ best hope to secure Afghanistan firmly under the domination of the U.S. empire.
Even Fox News notes today that “Both of Karzai’s vice presidents are former warlords whose forces allegedly killed thousands of people in the civil war of the 1990s that paved the way for the rise of the Taliban.”
Few people, including those against the wars, are paying attention to the US offensive in Marja, Afghanistan, which is now being spread north to Kandahar. The U.S. is already warning people there to leave, or else they will be considered Taliban sympathizers…in the second largest city in the country! Where should people go? It’s impossible not to kill civilians in an occupation, as reported Friday in Tighter Rules Fail to Stem Deaths of Innocent Afghans at Checkpoints.
“The people are tired of all these cruel actions by the foreigners, and we can’t suffer it anymore,” said Naqibullah Samim, a village elder from Hodkail, where Mr. Yonus lived. “The people do not have any other choice, they will rise against the government and fight them and the foreigners. There are a lot of cases of killing of innocent people.”
Yes, Obama and General Stanley McChrystal report the occupation is now “winning” even while they tell us to expect more casualties. While the headline is US deaths double in Afghanistan as troops pour in, the news is that more people in the US support the offensive than in December 2009
After a summer marked by the highest monthly death rates of the war, President Barack Obama faced serious domestic opposition over his decision in December to increase troops in Afghanistan, with only about half the American people supporting the move. But support for his handling of the war has actually improved since then, despite the increased casualties.
The latest Associated Press poll at the beginning of March found that 57 percent of those surveyed approved his handling of the war in Afghanistan compared to 49 percent two months earlier.
The Washington Post today polls 53% in favor of Obama’s policy in Afghanistan, so Obama feels he can get away with telling the troops in Afghanistan that people at home support the war there. I think that support is shallow, and temporary, and that we have a great responsibility to bring reality to people on why the U.S. is occupying Afghanistan. See A War for Empire – Not a “Good War” Gone Bad by Larry Everest.
The Iraq War was Illegitimate from Bush’s Invasion On
The Bush regime’s war on Iraq was, and remains, completely illegitimate by all measures. Yet, too few people, even those against the wars, stop to look at how the Iraq war began. As we said in Call to Drive Out the Bush Regime in 2005, “YOUR GOVERNMENT, on the basis of outrageous lies, is waging a murderous and utterly illegitimate war in Iraq, with other countries in its sights.” Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Tenet and the whole cabal openly lied about Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction and a link to al Qaeda and 9-11 in an attempt to bully other countries into joining the invasion.
The Bush regime carried out the destruction of civil society in Iraq: the electrical, educational, sewage, water, and security systems. In the process 1.2 million, displaced more than 4 million, tortured unknown numbers directly in detention, and made the country unlivable. The Bush doctrine of pre-emptive war amounted to a war crime on its face, of aggressive war.
Should we stop talking about that? Much of this country thinks the war is a) over or b) ending because Obama is withdrawing troops, even though private contractors are still pouring in for a permanent US military occupation. Foreign policy is gone from the headlines, except for that minor problem Obama has with Netanyahu.
I am still thinking about the piece in the Christian Science Monitor by Michael Ollove, reporting on the war from York, PA: “After seven years in Iraq and nine in Afghanistan, residents of York, Pa., talk about how the wars have become like a screen saver: always there but rarely acknowledged.”
So, that’s why our visible protests are important. A survey of the ways in which people protested:
Washington, DC:
Cindy Sheehan set up Camp OUT NOW on the national mall as part of the ongoing Peace of the Action effort to have continuous protest in Washington until the wars end. The action resumes April 6.
The Iraq War Memorial came to the Washington Monument, stopping thousands of tourists with the names of those killed in Iraq, both US military and Iraqis.
ANSWER Coalition 7,000 rallied and marched around the White House, depositing symbolic coffins at the offices of Haliburton (where an effigy of Dick Cheney was trampled); the offices of the Washington Post and Veterans Administration; and in the front of the White House. Cindy Sheehan, Elaine Brower, Matthis Chiroux and 5 others were arrested for not moving from in front of the White House, held for 48 hours, and banned from the White House area for six months. Read AP report. Watch the AP video. Flickr Gallery.
Iraq and Afghanistan veterans marched along with military families. While speaking at the rally, Elaine Brower, a leader of World Can’t Wait; Robynn Murray, an Iraq veteran, and Matthis Chiroux, an Afghanistan veteran and Iraq war resister, said the American flag stands for empire, and burned one. See The Nightmare Will End When We Wake Up! Watch the video.
Marches in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle:
Thousands marched. See Stephanie Tang of World Can’t Wait: Obama’s War is Killing the Afghan People, not Saving Them.
In San Francisco, Daniel Ellsberg spoke to a rally of thousands on the importance of protest:
Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the top-secret Pentagon Papers study of the Vietnam War and is the subject of the recent documentary film, “The Most Dangerous Man in America,” likened the protest and others like it around the country Saturday to a day of demonstrations organized against the conflict in Vietnam in 1969.
“They thought it had no effect,” he told the crowd in San Francisco, referring to the 1969 protesters. “They were wrong.” Ellsberg said President Richard Nixon was planning to escalate the war around that time, but held off.
In Los Angeles, thousands also marched, including a We Are Not Your Soldiers contingent carrying a banner signed by many more youth pledging to resist military recruiters.
Charlottesville, VA:
Friday, March 19, John Yoo made two speeches at the University of Virginia, and was disrupted at both by questions and objections to his authorship of the Bush torture memos; his promotion of aggressive war; and his theory of presidential powers. 150 people protested outside. See David Swanson, John Yoo: A President Can Nuke the United States for an account, photos & video.