Update: The White House has the full joint statement available at this link.
President Obama has touched down in Japan. While some groups have been calling for Obama to become the first American President to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki — the only two cities to be attacked using nuclear weapons — there are reports that instead President Obama and Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama will issue a joint statement sometime today calling for a nuclear weapons free world. According to one report:
In the statement, tentatively entitled the US-Japan joint initiative for a nuclear-free world, they would welcome rising international momentum toward arms reduction and non-proliferation, the Yomiuri said Thursday.
In their joint effort, the United States would seek to raise the global momentum, while Japan would push the message from its perspective as the only country to have been hit with atomic bombs.
The statement would be based on the UN resolution adopted in September at a Security Council summit hosted by Obama, Jiji Press said.
Meanwhile, the Obama administration is working furiously to negotiate a replacement treaty with Russia, as the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) is set to expire on December 5th. The new treaty is expected to modestly reduce both countries’ strategic nuclear weapons and is a good first step forward in showing renewed commitment to eliminating the risk posed by the more than 20,000 nuclear weapons in the world today. Once a new treaty is signed, it will have to be introduced for ratification by the Senate.
Additionally, there is growing momentum for US ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty to ban all nuclear weapons test explosions as part of a comprehensive agenda to reduce the threat posed by nuclear weapons. By preventing states from testing nuclear weapons, the treaty helps stop new nuclear weapons states from emerging. It also prevents newer and deadlier weapons from being tested, helping to keep arms races from spiralling out of control.
At home in the US, the effects of nuclear weapons testing in Nevada are explored in an excellent article in the Los Angeles Times by Ralph Vartabedian. Underground nuclear weapons testing at the Nevada Test Site “polluted 1.6 trillion gallons of water. That is as much water as Nevada is allowed to withdraw from the Colorado River in 16 years — enough to fill a lake 300 miles long, a mile wide and 25 feet deep.” You can read the whole article at the link, but here’s another interesting excerpt:
Over 41 years, the federal government detonated 921 nuclear warheads underground at the Nevada Test Site, 75 miles northeast of Las Vegas. Each explosion deposited a toxic load of radioactivity into the ground and, in some cases, directly into aquifers.
When testing ended in 1992, the Energy Department estimated that more than 300 million curies of radiation had been left behind, making the site one of the most radioactively contaminated places in the nation.
During the era of weapons testing, Nevada embraced its role almost like a patriotic duty. There seemed to be no better use for an empty desert. But today, as Nevada faces a water crisis and a population boom, state officials are taking a new measure of the damage.
The Washington Post is reporting today on two classified cables from the US Ambassador to Afghanistan to Washington, expressing deep concerns about a possible escalation of troops.
The cables came from Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry, a former military man who commanded US troops in Afghanistan for two years. Before that he was in charge of the Afghan army training program. Sounds like someone the White House should listen to.
In addition to his concerns regarding a possible escalation, Eikenberry criticized the lack of emphasis on non-military tools.
In the cables, Eikenberry also expressed frustration with the relative paucity of money set aside for spending on development and reconstruction this year in Afghanistan, a country wrecked by three decades of war. Earlier this summer he asked for $2.5 billion in nonmilitary spending for 2010, a 60 percent increase over what Obama had requested from Congress. But the request has languished even as the administration has debated spending tens of billions of dollars on new troops.
Unfortunately, all the options being considered by the President reportedly include large increases in troops, and CBS reported the plan could include a commitment of at least another four years. A chilling thought.
Like just about everybody, I am a huge fan of The Daily Show’s political analysis and incisive humor. So I was excited when, soon after I returned from Iran, I learned that the show had sent Jason Jones and producer Tim Greenberg to Iran to cover the elections. It was amazing to see them not in front of an obvious green screen picture of a bazaar, but instead visiting many of the fabulous places I had just seen on my trip. They did a wonderful job of bringing their wit to Iran and showing a side of the country that most Americans don’t usually see in the mainstream media.
In this video (warning: some explicit language), Tim and Jason talk about their desire to go to Iran and break through stereotypes, and their realization of how absurd the push to war with Iran coming from the US really is. You can see the full series from Iran here.
Matthew Hoh, the former Marine and Foreign Service Officer who resigned in protest of the war in Afghanistan, has rightly garnered a great deal of attention in recent weeks. He offers a coherent, credible case for shifting gears in Afghanistan and abandoning the idea that a counterinsurgency campaign can be successful.
In his resignation letter, Hoh laid out a principled stance for leaving his position:
I fail to see the worth or value 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…Thousands of our men and women have returned home with physical and mental wounds. The dead return only in bodily form to be received by families who must be reassured that their dead have been sacrificed for a purpose worthy of such futures lost, love vanished and promised dreams unkept. I have lost confidence such assurances can any more be made. As such, I submit my resignation.
In an interview with Fareed Zakaria, he points out that he has received a great deal of support from two important constituencies—Afghan-Americans and active duty military.
HOH: It’s been a bit overwhelming. It’s been a bit overwhelming.
My thoughts were this. I would publish the letter. And I figured I would get one or two days of attention, and then it would fade away. And I was fine with that.
However, I’ve received such an outpouring and a flood of e-mails, and particularly from two communities that have convinced me to stay in this and be a part of the debate as long as possible until it doesn’t make sense any more. And those two communities — one was Afghan-Americans.
I’ve had a lot of Afghan-Americans contact me and say, “Matt, you get it. You understand. Yes, there is a civil war going on. You understand this conflict (ph). You understand how Afghan society works. You understand this split within the Pashtuns. You understand valleyism, or whatever you want to call it.” And that has encouraged me quite a bit.
And the second one is active duty military. I have received many, many e-mails from active duty military and some guys who have just separated from service. Some are here in the States.
I’ve gotten many e-mails from guys in Afghanistan — some are people I know, but a lot are people I do not know — men and women who are saying, “Matt, thanks for doing this. Keep it up. We don’t know why we’re here. We’re not sure why we’re taking these casualties. We don’t know what it’s accomplishing.”
ZAKARIA: Do you think — the top military brass have all endorsed General McChrystal’s report and request. Do you think that down on the ground there is a very different feeling?
HOH: Oh, yes. Yes, there is. I think on the ground — and the perspective is that, what is the strategic value of what we’re doing here. Why are we doing this? What are we getting out of it?
It’s not going to defeat al Qaeda. It’s not going to — if you take our two goals as being the defeat of al Qaeda, and then, because of its nuclear weapons and because of the relationship with India, the stabilization of the government in Islamabad, 60,000 troops taking 50, 60 dead a month in this country, and how many wounded and killing how many Afghans, as well, it doesn’t accomplish either of those goals.
Last night, the House of Representatives voted a whopping 344-36 (with 22 voting “present”) to condemn the report on Operation Cast Lead in Gaza by renowned human rights investigator Judge Richard Goldstone as “irredeemably biased and unworthy of further consideration or legitimacy.” Goldstone, a self-described Zionist, led investigations into human rights abuses in Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia and his home country of South Africa. Goldstone turned down the original mandate to investigate Israel and only agreed to participate when he was given a mandate to scrutinize both Israel and Hamas. He found possible war crimes on both sides of the conflict and recommended internal investigations by both parties.
Judge Goldstone has been attacked, but as he himself has pointed out, critics in the US and elsewhere have not been able to point to specific substantive flaws in his findings. Watching interview with Bill Moyers, it’s hard to see how such a reasonable person could be demonized by so many.
You can find subsequent segments of the interview here.
Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), one of the few principled representatives who voted no on the resolution, explained in a Politico piece before the vote why Congress should read the Goldstone report rather than just dismissing it:
Instead, Congress is poised to oppose the Goldstone report without holding a single hearing on a document that few members of Congress, if any, have read.
This is a mistake. The stance of this Congress will erode U.S. credibility in the post-Obama world, and it will tarnish our commitment to the principle that all nations must be held to the same standards. Rather than undermine the report or Goldstone, we are at risk of undermining Congress’s and President Barack Obama’s reputation as honest brokers.
Israel can still pursue its own investigation, and critics of the Goldstone report should recognize that Israel is strong enough to withstand inquiry. Self-reflection is one of the hallmarks of a strong democracy. In fact, Israel has investigated itself in the past in connection with the Sabra and Shatila incidents. When nations like the United States, Israel, South Africa and others have pursued the truth through investigations — however uncomfortable — their people and politics have emerged stronger.
We stand for the values of democracy, truth and justice. There is no reason for Congress, Israel or any other party to fear an honest judge. Richard Goldstone is such a judge, and his report should be studied, not dismissed.
What does it say about our Congress that nearly 80% of the House would vote to condemn an even-handed report that so few have them have probably even read? Click here to see how your representative voted.
Two key committees in Congress have marked up Iran sanctions legislation, getting out in front of the Obama administration as it continues to pursue negotiations:
Asked during a CNN interview whether it was time to stop talking with Iran and move toward sanctions, Clinton said: “We are working with the IAEA (the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency), with France, Russia … who are all united and showing resolve in responding to the Iranian response and seeking clarification. So I’m going to let this process play out.”
Clinton did not say under what conditions the United States would consider fresh sanctions against Iran.
The Senate Banking Committee passed similar broad sanctions this week that seek
to prevent Iran from importing refined petroleum products, penalizes U.S. firms for helping Iran do so, bans contracts for companies to give Iran technology that could be used to censor free speech, allows states to divest from Iran, and much more.
The National Iranian American Council notes objections raised to the sanctions legislation by Sen. Corker (R-TN):
“This is a tacit vote of no confidence [against the Obama administration],” Corker said. During an exchange with a colleague after the vote, Corker revealed the “State Department actually did not want to see this happen.”
In addition, the House Foreign Affairs Committee approved the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act (H.R. 2194) by voice vote this week. In his opening statement, Rep. Berman (D-CA), who chairs the committee, noted that
All of us are aware that if the provisions of this bill are ever implemented, they would likely have a significant impact on the Iranian economy, including quite possibly on average Iranians. While that is a distasteful prospect, the urgency of dealing with the Iranian nuclear project — and the immense danger that a nuclear-armed Iran would pose to tens, if not hundreds, of million people who will fall within the range of its missiles – compels us to go forward with this legislation. Should its implementation prove necessary, it would be our hope that the Iranian regime would come to its senses and suspend its enrichment program at the earliest possible time.
Peace Action West has noted the many reasons why the sanctions being proposed are counterproductive, including the fact that they are likely to cause Iranians to blame the US and not their own government. Recent polls show that the Iranian public still strongly favors enrichment, even while expecting that harsher sanctions are likely to be placed on them. It’s unlikely the Iranian public will start pushing the regime to halt all uranium enrichment anytime soon. The Obama administration knows diplomacy is the best option to resolve tensions between the US and Iran. As the administration continues to let negotiations “play out,” Congress should hold back from actions like sanctions that threaten to undermine the this delicate process.
The New York Times ran an OpEd by Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Nicolas Kristoff calling for more “more schools, not troops” for Afghanistan. We need a lot more like these, because right now we’re trying to rebuild Afghanistan with bombs. Here’s one of the highlights:
The hawks respond: It’s naïve to think that you can sprinkle a bit of education on a war-torn society. It’s impossible to build schools now because the Taliban will blow them up.
In fact, it’s still quite possible to operate schools in Afghanistan — particularly when there’s a strong “buy-in” from the local community.
Greg Mortenson, author of “Three Cups of Tea,” has now built 39 schools in Afghanistan and 92 in Pakistan — and not one has been burned down or closed. The aid organization CARE has 295 schools educating 50,000 girls in Afghanistan, and not a single one has been closed or burned by the Taliban. The Afghan Institute of Learning, another aid group, has 32 schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan, with none closed by the Taliban (although local communities have temporarily suspended three for security reasons).
The Afghan Women’s Mission is sponsoring two nationwide speaking tours featuring two amazing, brave Afghan women: Zoya and Malalai Joya.
Zoya is a member of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, and Malai Joya is one of just a few women who’ve been elected to Afghanistan’s Parliament. Joya was thrown out of Parliament for her outspoken advocacy for women’s rights.
In 2001, the Bush administration used Afghan women’s hardships to sell war, but Afghan women still must fight to be heard – not just by their government, but by ours too. Both women will share a critical perspective of life in Afghanistan, and what Afghan women need. Peace Action West is co-sponsoring some of these events, and I hope you’ll check the calendar of events and attend if there is one in your area.
Below is a report back from Lindsay Caldwell, a Peace Action West organizer who attended an event featuring Zoya in Los Angeles.
“Absolutely NO photography is allowed tonight; this is very serious.” That was the introduction given at “Resisting the US Occupation of Afghanistan”, an event featuring Zoya, a women’s rights advocate from Afghanistan. It was a stiff reminder of the incredible courage of the woman we all came to hear. “Zoya” is an alias, and the ban on photography keeps her identity safe from would-be assassins. Like many other brave women’s rights activists, she is forced to continuously change ‘safe houses’ for her protection.
Zoya’s message to the audience was simple. It was a plea to Americans to pressure our government to change course in her country and to emphasize that time is of the essence as the Obama Administration makes its decision regarding troop increases.
She emphasized the lack of improvement in circumstances for civilians after 8 years of war. For women and children in particular, things have worsened. Rapes and acid attacks are on the rise. Zoya spoke about one young woman who attempted suicide by setting herself aflame. She told her she thought it better to have one quick death than many long, slow deaths. She told the story of one adolescent boy who joined the Taliban the day after losing 13 members of his family in a drone attack, echoing Peace Action West’s sentiment that civilian casualties fuel the Taliban movement.
She was critical of the American media for presenting a distorted view of the US occupation. The sense that we are liberating her people, she said, is simply untrue. The reality is that real grassroots supported political opposition to Karzai’s regime is always threatened into submission. RAWA did not support the recent election from the get-go because as Zoya said, “It doesn’t matter who’s voting, it matters who’s counting.”
She described the Karzai government as being ‘brother’ to the Taliban. Many of Karzai’s cabinet members are former Northern Alliance warlords who she said are in many ways worse than the Taliban. US foreign policy is empowering and arming these warlords, and in her words, the US is simply arming another terrorist group who will eventually wage another attack like 9/11.
During the Q&A I was able to ask Zoya a question. I told her that many members of Peace Action West who I’ve met with fear that withdrawing troops would mean abandoning the people of her country, and I asked how she would respond to that. She replied that the US could better protect Afghans and Americans by working to disarm the factions they have been arming the last 8 years and by helping to empower real grassroots movements within Afghanistan. She also cited a need for warlords to be brought to justice in order to set an example that their crimes cannot go unchecked.
One gentleman asked whether there were strong economic powers present in Afghanistan who could assist in the recovery of the country. For this, a former Karzai cabinet member came to the stage and began to paint a picture of a long history of survival of the Afghan people without intervention or aid. Though initially it was difficult to know where his story was taking us, in the end the message became evident: leave the worrying to Afghans, we don’t need your help to solve our problems.
I was reminded of a quote from the 1982 film Gandhi. In negotiating liberation from Britain one British ruler points out, “With respect Mr. Gandhi, without British administration this country would be reduced to chaos.” To which Gandhi replies, “I beg you to accept that there is no people on earth who would not prefer their own bad government to the good government of an alien power.” Perhaps we too, despite our best intentions, must accept this fact.
Ann Jones, who has spent years working with women in Afghanistan, wrote a gripping piece for the Nation that guts the notion that war has helped Afghan women, and seriously questions the purpose of escalation.
I felt a bit sick, as anyone would, from the picture she paints of what today’s Afghanistan holds for women. She cites a report from the human rights division of UN’s Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, which “attributes women’s worsening position in Afghan society to the violence the war engenders on two domestic fronts: the public stage and the home.”
The UNAMA researchers looked into the unmentionable subject of rape and found it to be “an everyday occurrence in all parts of the country” and “a human rights problem of profound proportions.” Outside marriage, the rapists are often members or friends of the family. Young girls forced to marry old men are raped by the old man’s brothers and sons. Women and children–young boys are also targets–are raped by people who have charge of them: police, prison guards, soldiers, orphanage or hospital staff members. The female victims of rape are mostly between the ages of 7 and 30; many are between 10 and 20, but some are as young as 3; and most women are dead by 42.
It’s just these kinds of horrific accounts that were used to sell the war in 2001. Now 8 years later, Jones pushes us beyond the simplistic notion that more troops mean more security and a better lot for women.
I confess that I agonize over competing proposals now commanding President Obama’s attention because I’ve spent years in Afghanistan working with women, and I’m on their side. When the Feminist Majority argues that withdrawing American forces from Afghanistan will return the Taliban to power and women to house arrest, I see in my mind’s eye the faces of women I know and care about. Yet an unsentimental look at the record reveals that for all the fine talk of women’s rights since the US invasion, equal rights for Afghan women have been illusory all along, a polite feel-good fiction that helped to sell the American enterprise at home and cloak in respectability the misbegotten government we installed in Kabul. That it is a fiction is borne out by recent developments in Afghanistan–President Karzai’s approving a new family law worthy of the Taliban, and American acquiescence in Karzai’s new law and, initially, his theft of the presidential election–and by the systematic intimidation, murder or exile of one Afghan woman after another who behaves as if her rights were real and worth fighting for.
The bad news on America’s allies in Afghanistan:
Most Afghans surveyed between 2002 and 2004 by the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission thought the leaders of the mujahedeen were war criminals who should be brought to justice (75 percent) and removed from public office (90 percent). The mujahedeen, after all, were Islamist extremists just like the Taliban, though less disciplined than the Taliban, who had risen up to curb the violent excesses of the mujahedeen and then imposed excesses of their own. That’s the part American officials seem unwilling to admit: that the mujahedeen warlords of the Karzai government and the oppressive Taliban are brothers under the skin. From the point of view of women today, America’s friends and America’s enemies in Afghanistan are the same kind of guys.
A key problem with current US strategy is our reliance on the military to deliver humanitarian aid and development projects – difficult jobs our already overburdened military doesn’t have the training or public trust to carry out.
Today, most American so-called development aid is delivered not by USAID, but by the military itself through a system of Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs), another faulty idea of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Soldiers, unqualified as aid workers and already busy soldiering, now shmooze with village “elders” (often the wrong ones) and bring “development,” usually a costly road convenient to the PRT base, impossible for Afghans to maintain and inaccessible to women locked up at home. Recent research conducted by respected Afghanistan hands found that this aid actually fuels “massive corruption”; it fails to win hearts and minds not because we spend too little but because we spend too much, too fast, without a clue. Meanwhile, the Taliban bring the things Afghans say they need–better security, better governance and quick, hard-edged justice. US government investigators are looking into allegations that aid funds appropriated for women’s projects have been diverted to PRTs for this more important work of winning hearts and minds with tarmac. But the greatest problem with routing aid through the military is this: what passes for development is delivered from men to men, affirming in the strongest possible terms the misogynist conviction that women do not matter. You’ll recognize it as the same belief that, in the Obama administration’s strategic reappraisal of Afghanistan, pushed women off the table.
The civilian agencies that could more successfully provide aid and development are anemic, and instead of directing the funds to them that they need, they are being co-opted by the military.
Unfortunately, proponents of the McChrystal plan for intensifying counterinsurgency and sending in thousands more troops may have gotten major new boost from John Kerry, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
You know what this means, right? We need to get louder. If you haven’t already, please click here and tell your member of Congress to get on the record against the war.
Jon Rainwater, Executive Director. For over 25 years, Jon has been active in campaigns on issues of peace, nuclear disarmament, social justice and environmental sustainability. 
Rebecca Griffin, Political Director. Rebecca is spearheading campaigns to get Afghanistan right, and promote a diplomatic solution with Iran. 
Cara Bautista, Deputy Political Director. Cara is head coordinator for 