Congressional progressives urge Obama to change Afghanistan strategy
Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) talks with President Obama. Photo courtesy of Rep. Lee's Facebook page
Leaders of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and its newly formed Afghanistan Taskforce have sent a letter (pdf) to President Obama urging “a comprehensive rethinking of our military mission, a complete redesign of our reconstruction and stabilization strategy and a courageous reconciliation strategy for Afghanistan.” Reps. Mike Honda (D-CA), Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), Lynn Woolsey (D-CA), Barbara Lee (D-CA) and Jim McGovern (D-MA) write:
We are concerned about committing additional US troops and taxpayer dollars in Afghanistan, especially when the US mission is unclear and when methods for measuring effectiveness are underdeveloped or nonexistent.
We are concerned about the economic reconstruction and stabilization strategy, specifically that foreign aid has thus far failed to rebuild Afghan institutions, infrastructure and individual capacity.
We are concerned about the political legitimacy and corruption of the Afghan government, a problem exacerbated by mismanaged elections, foreign aid distribution, and foreign intelligence and security alliances.
Our perspectives have manifested, formally and informally, via Congressional Progressive Caucus Member-led legislation: Requesting a timeline for eventual troop withdrawal (H.R. 2404, Rep. McGovern); requesting measurements for mission success; prohibiting funds for additional troop surges (H.R. 3699, Rep. Lee); and reorienting the current mission to invest 80 percent of foreign resources into political and economic development, with 20 percent towards security, e.g. peacekeeping, Afghan police/army training (Reps Honda and Grijalva). Additionally, our overall strategy in Afghanistan must be guided by smart security, a policy that will put diplomacy and development above the use of force (H. Res. 363, Rep. Woolsey).
As we work tirelessly to push the debate in Afghanistan toward a consideration of nonmilitary options, I am grateful for these progressive leaders who are willing to raise their voices and articulate an alternative vision for our engagement in Afghanistan and our overall foreign policy. The writers of the letter end by requesting a meeting with the president to discuss their ideas further. Members of the Progressive Caucus met with President Obama earlier this year to discuss healthcare reform and Afghanistan, and it is critical that this dialogue continues.
If you’re in the Bay Area, Rep. Lee will be holding a rally and press conference Monday, November 23rd at noon in the courtyard of the Dellums Federal Building in Oakland to support H.R. 3699, her bill to prohibit funds for an escalation in Afghanistan. If you can’t make it, check here next week for a report back, and click here to urge your representative to cosponsor the bill.
The findings in a new report out today by the JASONs, a group of independent, expert scientists, call into question the need for new nuclear weapons. Tasked by the House Armed Services Committee to study the Life Extension Programs (LEPs), a program to extend the lifetime of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile, the unclassified version of the report (JSR-09-334E) stated:
JASON finds no evidence that accumulation of changes incurred from aging and LEPs have increased risk to certification of today’s deployed nuclear warheads….
Lifetimes of today’s nuclear warheads could be extended for decades, with no anticipated loss in confidence, by using approaches similar to those employed in LEPs to date.
People as high up in the Obama administration as Secretary of Defense Robert Gates have continued pushing for new nuclear weapons like the Reliable Replacement Warhead, which Peace Action West and other organizations succeeded in blocking funding for under the Bush administration. Global Security Newsire reported on a high level meeting this summer where Gates again pushed for the RRW:
Defense Secretary Robert Gates raised the idea of reinstating the controversial Reliable Replacement Warhead effort during a secret “Principals’ Committee” meeting convened by the National Security Council, Global Security Newswire has learned.
Under the RRW project, government officials said they intended to design new warheads that could make the aging nuclear arsenal more safe, secure and reliable — without adding new military capabilities or resuming explosive testing. However, Congress eliminated funding for the Bush administration initiative for the past two fiscal years and, this year, President Barack Obama omitted the program from his fiscal 2010 budget request.
As the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability points out in their press release:
Since 2005, both Air Force and Department of Energy officials have claimed that new design nuclear warheads were necessary because of diminishing confidence in the nuclear stockpile. At the centerpiece of plans for building new warheads are new weapons production facilities proposed for Oak Ridge, Tennessee and Los Alamos, New Mexico….
The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has proposed construction of the Chemical and Metallurgical Research Replacement Nuclear Facility at Los Alamos for increased plutonium pit manufacturing. At Oak Ridge, public hearings are taking place right now to evaluate a proposal for the Uranium Processing Facility, which would produce new uranium components for new warheads.
All in all, it looks like it will be much harder for supporters of new nuclear weapons to continue to use these kinds of justifications now that the report by the JASONs has been released.
Malalai Joya in Parliament
Earlier this month, I had the privilege of hearing Afghan activist and suspended member of Parliament Malalai Joya speak in Berkeley. Joya is in the United States promoting her new book A Woman Among Warlords and dispelling myths about the United States’ presence in Afghanistan.
Joya did not mince words in denouncing the occupation of Afghanistan and disabusing the audience of the notion that the situation in Afghanistan has improved in the last eight years. Comparing the occupation to the rule of Taliban, Joya said the Afghan people went from “the frying pan to the fire.” She pointed out that violence against women is not only a problem from the Taliban; the warlords the United States and NATO work with are “a photocopy of the Taliban.”
As we know, much of General McChrystal’s strategy in Afghanistan depends on partnering with the Afghan government. Joya spoke out against the Karzai regime and what she called “the tragic drama of the so-called election.” One glaring example of how the Karzai regime does not protect women’s rights is the “personal status law” that Joya condemned, a piece of legislation signed by Karzai that severely limits women’s rights by essentially legalizing marital rape and requiring Shiia women to get permission for actions as simple as leaving their homes. Joya herself is in more danger now than during her years of teaching in underground girls’ schools under the Taliban. She has been the target of five assassination attempts, and told us she was even threatened with rape within Parliament for speaking out.
Ultimately, Joya’s top priority is to see foreign forces withdraw from Afghanistan. She noted that the Taliban is not popular with the Afghan people, and she feels that dealing with one enemy is much easier than dealing with two (the second being the US and NATO forces). According to Joya, the US is supporting “enemies of the people” in Afghanistan and making their struggle for freedom and democracy more difficult. She acknowledged that Afghanistan could use support, but that “no nation can donate liberation.”
Coinciding with her visit to the Bay Area, Joya had an OpEd in the San Jose Mercury News entitled “U.S. is doing no good in Afghanistan.” She writes:
We are sandwiched between three powerful enemies: the occupation forces of the U.S. and NATO, the Taliban and the corrupt government of Hamid Karzai.
Now President Obama is considering increasing troops to Afghanistan and simply extending former President Bush’s wrong policies. In fact, the worst massacres since 9/11 were during Obama’s tenure. My native province of Farah was bombed by the U.S. this past May. A hundred and fifty people were killed, most of them women and children. On Sept. 9, the U.S. bombed Kunduz Province, killing 200 civilians.
My people are fed up. That is why we want an immediate end to the U.S. occupation.
At the end of her speech, someone asked Malalai Joya what we should do as individuals. She encouraged us to raise our voices against our government’s policy and contact our politicians to pressure them for a new approach. UC Berkeley Professor Jerry Sanders urged everyone in the audience to buy two copies of Joya’s book, and adopt an official in Washington to send the book to so they can hear Joya’s message. We are constantly seeing a parade of politicians, pundits and military experts (mostly men, mostly western) telling us why we need to increase our military presence in Afghanistan. I really want every politician who is making decisions on these issues to hear the voices of people who really understand what is going on in Afghanistan and are profoundly impacted by US policy on the ground.
Malalai Joya did get the opportunity to speak with some members of Congress and staff during her to trip to the US. She said she told them that the silence of good people is worse than the action of evil people. It was invigorating to think about the weight of those words on members of Congress coming from a woman who speaks out at incredible risk to her own safety. Now we must take up the call and make sure voices like Joya’s are heard and our politicians take the moral, pragmatic approach to Afghanistan.
Numerous polls in recent months have shown that a majority of Americans do not think the war in Afghanistan is worth fighting and oppose sending more troops. The opposition to the war is even starker within the Democratic Party—many of the people who worked tirelessly to elect President Obama and will be essential to his success in 2012. In a Pew poll from September, only 37% of Democrats said the US and NATO should keep troops in Afghanistan, and that number is only going to decrease and things continue to deteriorate. Last weekend, the California Democratic Party, the largest in the nation, sent a clear message that President Obama’s base wants him to take a drastically different approach by passing a resolution calling for a withdrawal timetable:
Overwhelmingly approved on Sunday by the California Democratic Party’s 300-member statewide executive board, the resolution is titled “End the U.S. Occupation and Air War in Afghanistan.”
The resolution supports “a timetable for withdrawal of our military personnel” and calls for “an end to the use of mercenary contractors as well as an end to air strikes that cause heavy civilian casualties.”
Advocating multiparty talks inside Afghanistan, the resolution also urges Obama “to oversee a redirection of our funding and resources to include an increase in humanitarian and developmental aid.”
While Obama weighs Afghanistan policy options, the California Democratic Party’s adoption of the resolution is the most tangible indicator yet that escalation of the U.S. war effort can only fuel opposition within the president’s own party — opposition that has already begun to erode his political base.
President Obama has shown some signs of recognizing the need for a new approach, rejecting the four troop increase options he was given and asking US Ambassador to Afghanistan and former general Karl Eikenberry about exit strategies. The California Democratic Party took an important step by getting on the record during this critical decision-making period. You can make sure your voice is heard as well and encourage President Obama to follow those impulses. Call the White House comment line at 202-456-1111 and tell President Obama to reject a request for more troops in Afghanistan.
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.
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 