Afghanistan

December 16: Daniel Ellsberg and others arrested at White House anti-war protest

December 16, 2010 by Frank Gormlie
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Update: Up to 134 people were arrested at the White House fence.
Today in the midst of a snow storm, dozens of Veterans for Peace and their supporters gathered against the White House fence in acts of civil disobedience to protest the wars this country is fighting in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan. … Daniel Ellsberg and other protesters were arrested (details are still slight). There is one report that 124 people were arrested. (Tip o’hat to Barbara Cummings)

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Flashes from the Empire

July 28, 2010 by Source
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ALL LINKS AND DETAILS INSIDE:

Federal Judge blocks parts of Arizona’s new immigration law
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Antiwar Left Grows in Congress With Latest War-Funding Vote
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Michael Moore Is Right About Obama
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Bernie Sanders: No to Oligarchy

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Rep. Jerry Nadler: We Must End the War in Afghanistan Now

July 13, 2010 by Source
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Washington, DC – Today, Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) spoke out against the war in Afghanistan, and against the war’s funding, at a press conference of the Out of Afghanistan Congressional Caucus.

“Every dollar we spend in Afghanistan, every life we waste there, is a waste,” said Nadler. “An intelligent policy is not to try to remake a country that nobody since Genghis Khan has managed to conquer. What makes us think, what arrogance gives us the right to assume that we can succeed where the Moguls, the British, the Soviets, failed…..

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The War Is Making You Poor Act

May 26, 2010 by Source
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By Congressman Alan Grayson /MichaelMoore.com / May 21, 2010

Next week, there is going to be a “debate” in Congress on yet another war funding bill. The bill is supposed to pass without debate, so no one will notice.

What George Orwell wrote about in “1984” has come true. What Eisenhower warned us about concerning the “military-industrial complex” has come true. War is a permanent feature of our societal landscape, so much so that no one notices it anymore.

But we’re going to change this. Today, we’re introducing a bill called ‘The War Is Making You Poor Act’. The purpose of this bill is to connect the dots, and to show people in a real and concrete way the cost of these endless wars.

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Peace Activists Mobilize to Protest San Diego Drone Manufacturer

April 19, 2010 by Source
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Regional Mobilization Here on May 18-19 Calls for an End to Civilian Casualties in Pakistan-Afghanistan Border Region

Peace activists from across California and even from Nevada are planning to mobilize here in San Diego to protest the world’s largest and leading manufacturer of drones May 18-19.

San Diego is home to defense contractor General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, site of the activists demonstration. General Atomics builds the Predator and Reaper drones generally costing U.S. taxpayers $4 million to $12 million each.

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Message from the people who want us out of Afghanistan: Call your Congress this week

April 13, 2010 by Source
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Spring is here, but the endless, pointless wars grind on. U.S. troops are preparing for an offensive in Afghanistan ‘s Helmand province. As people lose their homes, their jobs, and struggle to make ends meet; as teachers are laid off and libraries are closed across America ; money gushes into the war and military budgets.
*Defund the Afghanistan Escalation!
*National Call-in to Congress Days April 13-15

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Afghanistan: The New Great Game of Oil Wars and the Next Chapter in the Obama Administration

December 4, 2009 by Source
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The Afghanistan War cannot be Barack Obama’s war anymore than it is historically correct to call it George W Bush’s war – because there is a history revealed that says different. They inherited a stage in a conquest that has been playing out in modern times from as far back as 1839. It is all part of something called the “Great Game,” a competition to control Central Asia of which Afghanistan is the geographical bridge.

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Cong. Susan Davis target of anti-Afghan war protesters

December 2, 2009 by Frank Gormlie
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CITY HEIGHTS, San Diego. In protest of President Obama’s Afghanistan war escalation, a small crowd gathered at the corner of Fairmont and University Avenue to wave signs, chant, and signify their opposition by their presence. Congresswoman Susan Davis, who has offices nearby, was the target of the protest for her pro-war stance.

The protest had been called by San Diego’s Peace and Justice Coalition as “The Day After” demonstration to Obama’s West Point speech where he declared he’s sending 30,000 more US troops to Afghanistan.

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The Moment of Crystallized Disenchantment – an Appeal to Progressives Who Have Supported Barack Obama

December 1, 2009 by Frank Gormlie

In just a few hours, President Obama will lay out his plan to send an additional 30,000+ US troops to Afghanistan. Which makes this a very trying moment for progressives who supported Obama during the campaign, his Presidency, and up to now. It is a very painful moment, a very anguishing one, as many of us are picking up our anti-war protest signs once again. Many of us will be demonstrating against this decision in the coming days and weeks ahead.

Do you feel the pain? I certainly do. This is even very painful for me to write. The pain I feel, that we feel – those of us who did support Obama- is very real. And it is to those I now appeal – those who championed the first African-American to assume the Presidency, to take the reins of our Empire in the hopes of bringing our democracy back from the eight long Bush years.

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Needed: New National Security Thinking

December 1, 2009 by Source
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by Katrina vanden Heuvel / The Nation / Dec. 01, 2009

Tonight President Obama will announce his new Afghanistan policy. By all accounts it will be one of military escalation. This is a tragic moment–both for the nation and his presidency–and it is one I had hoped the President would avoid by courageously leading us in a wiser direction, one that views 21st century challenges anew, in fresh and necessary ways.

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An Open Letter to President Obama from Michael Moore on Afghanistan

November 30, 2009 by Source
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Dear President Obama,

Do you really want to be the new “war president”? If you go to West Point tomorrow night (Tuesday, 8pm) and announce that you are increasing, rather than withdrawing, the troops in Afghanistan, you are the new war president. Pure and simple. And with that you will do the worst possible thing you could do — destroy the hopes and dreams so many millions have placed in you. With just one speech tomorrow night you will turn a multitude of young people who were the backbone of your campaign into disillusioned cynics. You will teach them what they’ve always heard is true — that all politicians are alike. I simply can’t believe you’re about to do what they say you are going to do. Please say it isn’t so.

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Focusing on Ft. Hood Killer’s Beliefs Are an Easy Out to Avoid the Deeper Reasons for the Massacre

November 6, 2009 by Source

By Mark Ames / AlterNet / November 6, 2009

It’s hard to pinpoint what’s the most shocking thing about Major Malik Nadal Hasan’s shooting rampage in Fort Hood, Texas. I’ll start with this: there’s nothing all that ground-breaking about it. Happens all the time, it’s just that we’re a nation of amnesiacs who forget all the unpleasantries, and refuse to learn the valuable lessons.

For starters, Fort Hood is located in Killeen, Texas — where one of the deadliest rampage shootings in American history took place in 1991, when an unemployed ex-Navy enlistee ….

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A Secret History of Dissent in the All-Volunteer Military

July 1, 2009 by Source
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In a study published in the Armed Forces Journal in 1971, it was reported that the U.S. military in Vietnam was at that moment at the edge of chaos.

In fact, statistics flowing back to Washington about the American war machine in Vietnam then pointed toward an unimaginable nightmare. Drug use was rampant; desertions stood at 70 per thousand, a modern high; small-scale mutinies or “combat refusals” were at critical, if untabulated, levels; incidents of racial conflict had soared; and strife between “lifers” and draftees was at unprecedented levels.

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Rory Fanning ends his journey for Pat Tillman in Ocean Beach

May 18, 2009 by Frank Gormlie
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On Saturday, May 16th, Rory Fanning came to the end of his journey – Ocean Beach. He had just finished his 8 month, 2700 mile walk across the USA in memory of his friend Pat Tillman.

Pat Tillman, you may remember, was a famous pro-football star, who was killed by “friendly fire” while serving in Afghanistan. But …

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The Anti-War Dilemma: How To Protest A President You Trust

May 12, 2009 by Source

During the Bush era, peace protests were presupposed. If the President of the United States showed up anywhere, so did the protesters. Now that Barack Obama has taken over the helm, though, peace activists are debating and rehashing protest strategies and often not protesting at all.

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Whistling Past the Afghan Graveyard – Where Empires Go to Die

February 5, 2009 by Source
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It is now a commonplace — as a lead article in the New York Times’s Week in Review pointed out recently — that Afghanistan is “the graveyard of empires.” Given Barack Obama’s call for a greater focus on the Afghan War (“we took our eye off the ball when we invaded Iraq…”), and given indications that a “surge” of U.S. troops is about to get underway there, Afghanistan’s dangers have been much in the news lately. Some of the writing on this subject, including recent essays by Juan Cole at Salon.com, Robert Dreyfuss at the Nation, and John Robertson at the War in Context website, has been incisive on just how the new administration’s policy initiatives might transform Afghanistan and the increasingly unhinged Pakistani tribal borderlands into “Obama’s War.”

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Pakistani troops fire at U.S. choppers on border

September 25, 2008 by Staff

UPDATE II:  New Report Says That U.S. Ground Troops Exchanged Fire With Pakistani Troops – go here. UPDATE: Pakistani President Denies Troops Fired at Choppers – Says Flares Were Shot – go here. NATO and Pentagon say helicopters were in Afghanistan during incident msnbc / September 25, 2008 KABUL, Afghanistan – Pakistani troops fired at […]

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A US-NATO War In Pakistan? – An Anatomy of the Current Crisis

September 24, 2008 by Staff

UPDATE: Pakistan Army says it found U.S. spy drone wreckage but denies shooting plane down – Go here for story. by Alan Nasser / Common Dreams / Sept. 22, 2008 On Saturday evening, the Marriott hotel in Islamabad, Pakistan, one of the city’s two most luxurious hotels, located near the presidential office, the parliament building, […]

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Hours After Adm. Mullin Assures Pakistan We Respect Their Sovereignty – We Send In Missiles

September 17, 2008 by Staff

After vows to respect sovereignty, U.S. strikes again in Pakistan By Saeed Shah • McClatchy Newspapers • September 17, 2008 ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – A U.S. missile strike today in Pakistan further inflamed relations between the two anti-terrorism allies, hours after the U.S. military chief vowed to “respect Pakistan’s sovereignty.” The strike against suspected militants in […]

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The Value of One, the Value of None

September 11, 2008 by Staff

An Anatomy of Collateral Damage in the Bush Era By Tom Engelhardt/ TomDispatch.com / September 11, 2008 In a little noted passage in her bestselling book, The Dark Side, Jane Mayer offers us a vision, just post-9/11, of the value of one. In October 2001, shaken by a nerve-gas false alarm at the White House, […]

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UN accuses US-led troops in deaths of Afghan civilians, including 60 children

August 26, 2008 by Staff

By Fisnik Abrashi / August 26, 2008 KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) – The United Nations said Tuesday it has found “convincing evidence” that U.S. coalition troops and Afghan forces killed some 90 civilians, including 60 children, in airstrikes in western Afghanistan. The U.N. said it based its findings solely on the testimony of villagers and meetings […]

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500: Deadly US Milestone in Afghan War

August 7, 2008 by Staff

  by: Kirk Semple and Andrew W. Lehren / The New York Times / 06 August 2008 Not long after Staff Sgt. Matthew D. Blaskowski was killed by a sniper’s bullet last Sept. 23 in eastern Afghanistan, his mother received an e-mail message with a link to a video on the Internet. A television reporter […]

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End the Occupation of Iraq — and Afghanistan

July 29, 2008 by Staff

by Marjorie Cohn / Published on Tuesday, July 29, 2008 by CommonDreams.org So far, Bush’s plan to maintain a permanent U.S. military presence in Iraq has been stymied by resistance from the Iraqi government. Barack Obama’s timetable for withdrawal of American troops has evidently been joined by Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, Bush has mentioned […]

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Obama, Iraq and Afghanistan

July 29, 2008 by Staff

by Tom Hayden / Published on Tuesday, July 15, 2008 by The Nation Barack Obama has restated his phased withdrawal plan for Iraq in response to public questioning, but committed himself to expanding the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Any proposal to transfer American troops from Iraq to Afghanistan and Pakistan is sure to cause […]

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