Withdraw US troops from Afghanistan and join protests on Oct 7-10

The following email was distributed by United for Peace and Justice, with reference to a recently created website, http://www.endafghanistanwar.com The website was launched by Peace Action, AFSC and WRL, and a host of other national peace organizations. In the following message, the coalition of peace groups bring our attention to reasons why we should support the withdrawal of US (and foreign) troops from Afghanistan and also issue a call to action in support of this goal.


Our Call to Action: October 7-10, 2010

As we approach the ninth anniversary of the disastrous invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, we call for decentralized international days of action October 7-10 to bring U.S. and NATO troops home. We call for a ceasefire, negotiations and the withdrawal of foreign forces.

The U.S.-NATO phase of the Afghan War has been predictably deadly and counterproductive since the beginning. Even U.S. military leaders now concede that there is no military solution to what is at its core an Afghan civil war. Yet, in an era defined by the highest levels of unemployment since the Great Depression of the 1930s, instead of investing in job creation and provision of essential social services, our governments are flushing colossal amounts of taxpayers’ money down the drain of a futile, murderous and destructive war.

Rather than “winning hearts and minds”, the war and long-term foreign military occupation have alienated the Afghan people and fueled deepening and increasingly widespread armed resistance by local communities and the fractured Taliban. A new civilian UN mandate in Afghanistan is needed to create and develop human security. A growing majority of Afghans no longer see U.S. and NATO forces as liberators. Instead, they see Western occupiers as the primary cause of their insecurity and suffering and want them to leave. As the international press reports, “a drumbeat is starting to sound across Afghanistan in favor of talking to the Taliban”.

Instead of the promised peace and security, Afghans are suffering an ever-growing civilian death toll. The corruption of the increasingly unpopular U.S.-imposed warlord/Karzai government, which controls little more than the capital Kabul, is now infamous. The 2010 presidential election has been universally condemned as a fraud. Massive increases in poppy cultivation have further corrupted the Karzai government, warlords and the Taliban, who use the drug trade to maintain their privileges and finance the continuing civil war. By allying with minority non-Pashtun warlords to overthrow the Taliban in 2001 and making them the foundation of the Karzai government, the majority Pashtuns were further alienated from the rulers in Kabul. And, with the exception of Kabul, the values shared by warlords and the Taliban have meant few or no changes for women.

We therefore call for decentralized international days of nonviolent action October 7-10 urging a ceasefire, Afghan and international negotiations, and the urgent withdrawal of all foreign military forces from that beleaguered nation. With actions from vigils, banner drops, conferences and meetings with government officials to teach-ins, demonstrations and civil disobedience, we can move our governments to end this catastrophic war.