Military saying no to Afghanistan

There is an emerging uprising underway apposing the war in Afghanistan and the peace activists are not as one might expect, students and hippies, but rather the very service people deployed for this fight.

Two recent commendable examples include; the resignation of Matthew P. Hoh from his post as Senior Civilian Representative in Zabul Province, and the Veterans For Peace Group calls for action.

Extracts from Matthew P. Hoh’s resignation letter to Ambassador Nancy J. Powell:

September 10, 2009

Dear Ambassador Powell,

It is with great regret and disappointment I submit my resignation from my Appointment as a Political Officer in the Foreign Service and my post as the senior
Civilian Representative for the U.S. Government in Zabul Province.

I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States' presence in Afghanistan. I have doubts and reservations about our current strategy and planned future strategy, but my resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end. To put simply: I fail to see the value or the worth in continued U.S. casualties or expenditures of resources in support of the Afghan government in what is, truly, a 35-year old civil war.

If the history of Afghanistan is one great stage play, the United States is no more than a supporting actor, among several previously, in a tragedy that not only pits tribes, valleys, clans, villages and families against one another, but, from at least the end of King Zahir Shah's reign, has violently and savagely pitted the urban, secular, educated and modern of Afghanistan against the rural, religious, illiterate and traditional. It is this latter group that composes and supports the Pashtun insurgency.

The Pashtun insurgency, which is composed of multiple, seemingly infinite, local groups, is fed by what is perceived by the Pashtun people as a continued and sustained assault, going back centuries, on Pashtun land, culture, traditions and religion by internal and external enemies.

In both RC East and South, I have observed that the bulk of the insurgency fights not for the white banner of the Taliban, but rather against the presence of foreign soldiers and taxes imposed by an unrepresentative government in Kabul.

The United States military presence in Afghanistan greatly contributes to the legitimacy and strategic message of the Pashtun insurgency. In a like manner our backing of the Afghan government in its current form continues to distance the government from the people. The Afghan government's failings, particularly when weighed against the sacrifice of American lives and dollars, appear legion and metastatic:

• Glaring corruption and unabashed graft;
  

• A President whose confidants and chief advisers comprise drug lords and war crimes villains, who mock our own rule of law and counter narcotics efforts;

• A system of provincial and district leaders constituted of local power brokers, opportunists and strongmen allied to the United States solely for, and limited by, the value of our US AID and CERP contracts and whose own political and economic interests stand nothing to gain from any positive or genuine attempts at reconciliation; and
  

• The recent election process dominated by fraud and discredited by low voter turnout, which has created an enormous victory for our enemy who now claims a popular boycott and will call into question worldwide our government's military, economic and diplomatic support for an invalid and illegitimate Afghan government.
  

I find specious the reasons we ask for bloodshed and sacrifice from our young men and women in Afghanistan. If honest, our stated strategy of securing Afghanistan to prevent al-Qaeda resurgence or regrouping would require us to additionally invade and occupy western Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, etc. Our presence in Afghanistan has only increased destabilization and insurgency in Pakistan where we rightly fear a toppled or weakened Pakistani government may lose control of its nuclear weapons.

Our forces, devoted and faithful have been committed to conflict in an indefinite and unplanned manner that has become a cavalier, politically expedient and Pollyannaish misadventure.

Similarly, the United States has a dedicated and talented cadre of civilians, both U.S. government employees and contractors, who have been ineffectually trained and led with guidance and intent shaped more by the political climate in Washington, D.C. than in Afghan cities, villages, mountains and valleys.

"We are spending ourselves into oblivion"

Thousands of our men and women have returned home with physical and mental wounds, some that will never heal or will only worsen with time. The dead return only in bodily form to be received by families who must be reassured their dead have sacrificed for a purpose worthy of futures lost, love vanished, and promised dreams unkept. I have lost confidence such assurances can anymore be made. As such, I submit my resignation.

Veterans' Group to Members: Multiply Resistance by Any Peaceful Means Possible.

By Mike Ferner informationclearinghouse
October 28, 2009

Extracts:

In a statement directed to the U.S. House of Representatives, President Obama and its membership, Veterans For Peace urged its chapters to demonstrate opposition to the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan by doing two things:

• Take the actions listed below within the next several days, before President Obama decides to escalate the war in Afghanistan, and

• Plan acts of even greater resistance during the two days following any such decision.VETERANS' GROUP TO MEMBERS: MULTIPLY RESISTANCE BY ANY PEACEFUL MEANS AVAILABLE

Continue writing and calling our representatives and demanding peace.

• If we’ve done that: take to the streets
  

• If we’ve done that: sit down in the streets
  

• If we’ve done that: sit down in Congressional offices
  

• If we’ve done that: sit down, clog up, incapacitate, call in sick, withdraw consent and generally bring the nation’s business to a halt, wherever and whenever we can, with any peaceful means available.

Although the America of our childhood history books has been shaken and some would say, shattered by what we learned in the military and since, we can still hear the call to service when it is clear and true.

Nothing could be more clear or true today than the need for us to do everything we humanly can to stop the killing. Not just stop the escalation – stop the killing. Bring all the troops home. Take care of them when they get here. Pay to rebuild what we have destroyed.

It is important for us to rededicate ourselves to the resolution we adopted at our 2008 convention: Afghanistan is not “the right war.” We must leave as soon as possible.

This is important to repeat because this administration and some in Congress would have us believe that we cannot withdraw immediately from Afghanistan, we must provide some stability and protection from the likes of the Taliban.

So we state without doubt: our occupation of Afghanistan is driving the violent opposition to it. More U.S. troops and more occupation will mean more anger and yet more violent reaction from those whose lands we occupy.

But we are not in Afghanistan to give them democracy, even if that were possible. Neither is our purpose to build up that country’s smaller, more democratic institutions that serve the population. We occupy Afghanistan because America the Empire demands control of its resources and to have a strategic locations from which to project military power.

And no one – NO one, but us is going to stop the killing; neither the President nor the Congress. We can beseech them, ask them, demand from them that they stop the killing and bring all the troops home. But until we exert the power of massive resistance to the Empire that only we can exert, it will keep rolling over Afghanis, Iraqis, Pakistanis and whoever else that is in its way.

If we do not take every step we can we know what will happen. Combat brigades will stay in Iraq, drone attacks, Special Forces and the CIA will continue to kill and maim in Pakistan, and 40, 60, 80,000 more troops will be sent to Afghanistan where the suffering and death will increase dramatically – for years to come.