The peace movement was moving full-throttle during the primary season to confront the presidential candidates on the war, and can take credit for helping to shift the momentum from Hillary Clinton — who voted for the invasion of Iraq — to Barack Obama — who opposed the invasion. And we have certainly contributed to the momentous shift on the need for a timeline for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq. We have also moved into high gear to prevent a war with Iran, and so far, have been holding our ground on that front.

But in Afghanistan the peace movement has been missing in action. This has come back to hit us in the face during Barack Obama’s Middle East trip, where he called for sending 10,000 more troops to Afghanistan. John McCain, not to be one-upped in putting our young men and women in harm’s way, is also calling for an escalation of the Afghan war.

My first trip to Afghanistan was during the height of the U.S. invasion in 2001. I was horrified to see the number of innocent civilians killed and maimed by our “smart bombs.” As I sat in makeshift hospitals watching children bleed to death, or saw the craters made by our bombs where homes used to be, or visited farmers whose limbs were torn off by our cluster bomblets, I wondered where this military adventure would lead.

Seven years later, we see the results: Innocent Afghans continue to be killed and maimed, more US soldiers are now dying in Afghanistan than Iraq, the Taliban have gained new strength, opium production has soared, and Osama bin Laden has not been found. The Afghan people continue to be among the poorest in the world, women are still oppressed, and the U.S. government reneged on its promise of a “Marshall Plan” to rebuild Afghanistan.

Now we have the two major presidential contenders — Barack Obama and John McCain — advocating the exact same “solution”: Send more troops. But more troops will only mean more violence, more suffering, more killing of innocents, and more recruits for the Taliban. This war will drag on and on, for there is no way to conquer tribal forces in a vast, rugged, thinly populated country like Afghanistan and the tribal areas of Pakistan. Just ask the Russians. With nearly twice as many troops as the U.S./NATO forces and with three times the number of Afghan soldiers, they left defeated after 9 years of fighting and 15,000 dead.

It’s time for the peace movement to come up with a position on Afghanistan. We know that war is not the answer, but what is? It’s not enough to simply say “Troops out now.” Should we be calling for talks with the Taliban? In Iraq, the U.S. government not only talked to Sunni insurgent groups that killed U.S. soldiers but is now allied with them.

How can we stop Afghanistan and the tribal areas of Pakistan from being a training ground for militant fundamentalists? How can we bring those involved in terrorist attacks to justice, and prevent future attacks, without waging an open-ended war? Should we advocate a timeline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops and if so, based on what criteria? How can we work with the peace movements in NATO countries to have a more unified and effective position?

What should we call for in terms of development aid to Afghanistan? How can the Afghan economy be weaned from opium? How can we truly support Afghan women? What will happen to them if the Taliban take over again?

This debate is long overdue. We can’t put it off anymore and knee-jerk slogans won’t work. We, the peace movement, need to come together and develop a strategy before our troops are sent from the “bad war” in Iraq to the “good war” in Afghanistan.

Medea Benjamin (medea@globalexchange.org) is cofounder of CODEPINK and Global Exchange

When we invaded Iraq Kennedy and friends simply cut out the word “Afghanistan” on their press releases and pasted in Iraq.

Now, Obama wants to continue this “immoral” war in Afghanistan? The same war which Obama claimed our troops were just “air raiding villages and killing civilians?”

No wonder Artie is in such high dudgeon today!

There were some earlier posts that made it seem like the lefties really didn’t have a problem with our involvement in Afghanistan, but I remember a Los Angeles Times editorial of Oct 26, 2001 that said: “The experts are warning that both the political and military elements of Operation Enduring Freedom are doomed to slip into a quagmire or fail entirely,” Operation Enduring Freedom began Oct. 7, 2001. Two months after the editorial ran, the United States liberated Afghanistan.

I think the reason that Vietnam turned into a quagmire was that LBJ personally micro-managed the military targets, and let the left wing propaganda machine make it appear that we lost the Tet offensive, when the reverse was true. If Obama has his way, we will be fighting in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Don’t get me wrong, oil’s a factor in the invasion of Iraq, but only 1 of many reasons to invade (the last resort as it was). No, you’ve brought us full circle Arthur. The war in Iraq is more about domestic political conflict…hence the silence now that such a conflict (the effort to remove President Bush) has failed and is moot.

A nation decends into anarchy or is attacked by a rogue nation…fock’em, let em die

So: Iraq was attacked? By which rogue nation? It had descended into anarchy? Really? That’s the first time I’ve heard this one.

Another way you analogy sucks: when we send aid to countries who have suffered natural disasters, we don’t then kill the people and then have the posters on Flopping Aces and Confederate Yankee say, “Sh*t happens. The tsunami shouldn’t have used the people as human shields.”

‘A nation decends into anarchy or is attacked by a rogue nation…fock’em, let em die’

Particularly if the population didn’t have the common sense to live where oil exists or where we could play out our own domestic political conflicts.

I should have typed ‘electing conservatives to congress’.

Sadly reactionaries in this era were bipartisan.

And wordsmith the argument was/remains ‘who lost China/ Russia/fill in the blank.

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/acheson4.htm

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9404E7DD103AF935A25751C0A96F958260

In fact the arguments about dealing with the Reds had far less to do with those unfortunates overseas than it did with electing Republicans to congress and the White House.

Fighting communism was rather bipartisan in recognition of its evils. Both Democrats and Republicans acknowledged the threat it posed to the world, prior to the last half of the Vietnam War Battle.

Spare me.

China wasn’t ours to ‘win’ or ‘lose’. Nor was Russia.

In fact the arguments about dealing with the Reds had far less to do with those unfortunates overseas than it did with electing Republicans to congress and the White House.

Take it up with the Nationalists who were so corrupt they couldn’t muster the popular support to defeat a ragtag bunch of communist guerrillas.

Right. Very Jimmy Carterish of you. What is the price and cost upon the world when we don’t intervene? Are the people of China and Iran far better off, since the rise of communist China and the Khomeinites? Are we, and the rest of the world at large, in a better place today, because the opposing indigenous side was too weak to survive the thrust of Soviet-backed Mao and religious fanatics?

Gee, Arthur….what happened when we basically stood back and watched an earlier domino drop on China? 30 million, as a conservative estimate, on lives destroyed in the immediate aftermath of Mao consolidating his rule? Education camps and mass suffering…

Gee wordsmith, right out of the red-baiter playbook circa 1949.

Take it up with the Nationalists who were so corrupt they couldn’t muster the popular support to defeat a ragtag bunch of communist guerrillas.

http://www.ccds.charlotte.nc.us/History/China/save/hance/Hance.html