87 representatives call for quicker withdrawal from Afghanistan
Last Friday, 87 House members sent a letter to President Obama stating support for a plan to accelerate the end of combat operations in Afghanistan (as announced by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta earlier this month). The letter pointed out the growing support for an end to the war in Congress and the public:
The majority of Americans want a safe and orderly military withdrawal from Afghanistan as quickly as possible, as recent public opinion polls indicate. The desire by the American people for an accelerated transition in Afghanistan was reflected in votes taken in Congress last year, in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate during their respective debates on amendments offered by Representatives McGovern and Jones and by Senator Merkley to the FY 2012 National Defense Authorization Act. These votes show there is strong bipartisan political support to take bold steps regarding U.S. policy in Afghanistan.
The letter points out that many of the signers support a more rapid withdrawal than announced by Panetta. While we want to keep pushing for a quicker transition and more clarity around the plan, it is important that we reinforce this major step in the right direction. With pressure from the supporters of endless war in Afghanistan, the administration could be tempted to backtrack. This letter offers an important counterweight and gives the president political space to stand his ground and take even bolder steps to end the war.
Many thanks to all of you who took action to urge your representatives to sign the letter. You can read the entire letter and see the list of signers here.
Bring peace to the Inland Empire
Last year, we were only six votes away from passing an amendment in the House calling for a quicker end to the war in Afghanistan. Just imagine what we could do with a pro-peace majority.
Help us make that a reality by supporting Mark Takano’s bid to win California’s new 41st district. Click here to donate.
This new district provides a rare opportunity to elect a strong progressive candidate in the Inland Empire, an area of southern California that has been dominated for years by conservative Republicans.
Teacher Mark Takano will bring fresh energy and new priorities to the House, fighting to spend our money on things like education instead of unnecessary wars. His family’s history in Hiroshima provides a unique perspective on the horror of nuclear weapons that needs to be heard in Congress. Not only is Mark Takano poised to be a great leader on our issues—we know he can win.
When you donate to candidates through Peace Action West, you show them that peace matters to politically engaged people in this country. Your donation shows Mark Takano that supporters of a smarter, saner foreign policy have his back because he has ours. Can you donate $10 to help Mark win this important race?
I am looking forward to working with Mark Takano in Congress next year. Your support will make sure that can happen. Thank you for donating.
Paid for by the Peace Action West Voter Fund.
$7.6 billion buys a lot of Valentine candy
Today, the Obama administration released their budget request for 2013. Here’s a look at the multi-billion dollar early Valentine’s Day gift to the nuclear weapons complex squirreled away within the Department of Energy’s budget.
The President is requesting $7.6 billion for nuclear weapons activities, which is a lot of money. But let’s start with the good news: It turns out nuclear weapons are not completely safe from the deficit-cutting budget axe.
Good: The Total is Less Than We Expected
In 2010, the administration announced a 10-year plan to increase nuclear weapons spending, and according to that plan they were going to request $7.9 billion for 2013, which would have been a 9% increase over what Congress approved last year. But apparently, they decided to face reality and accept that nukes can’t have complete immunity from the tough choices that have to be made in these difficult times. This request of $7.6 billion is a 5% increase over 2012, and still a lot of money to waste on nuclear weapons, but hopefully a sign that they are coming around.
Good: New Nuclear Bomb Plant Gets Zero Dollars
Last year, Congress gave the DOE $200 million to start work on a new nuclear bomb factory in Los Alamos, New Mexico that would increase our capacity to build new nuclear weapons. But, for 2013 the administration is asking for nothing! Zip, zero, zilch.
That is exactly how much this bomb plant should get, because it is expensive and unnecessary and the planning has been a mess since the beginning. As POGO explains, there are at least eight reasons this facility is a disaster. For example, the estimated cost of this plant has ballooned exponentially in the 10 years they’ve been planning it, here you can see just how much:
Courtesy of Project on Government Oversight, pogo.org
Oh, and that is their estimate based on a design that is only 45% complete. After 10 years of planning. We don’t know how much longer it will take to finish the design, or how much the estimates could increase when they do. The DOE says they are postponing the project for 5 years to save money while they work on a more urgent facility, and claim this will save taxpayers $1.8 billion in the next 5 years. But this bomb plant will only be more unnecessary and more of a waste of money in 5 years. What they should do is scrap the plant entirely and save us $5.9 billion.
We’ll get to the bad news after the jump: Read more…
When $613 billion = belt-tightening: the 2013 Pentagon budget
The big picture
With much fanfare, the Pentagon gave a preview of their Fiscal Year 2013 budget rollout late last month. The budget is informed by the earlier announcement of a new 21st century military strategy as well as legislation passed by Congress that required around $487 billion in military spending reductions over 10 years.
These shifts come on the heels of years of skyrocketing military spending, including two wars that were paid for outside the regular budget process for most of the last decade.
Today, the administration released the details of all its budget proposals, now kicking it to Congress to fight over favored line items and engage in the bigger debate about what our nation can afford and what cuts our security can sustain.
The big picture is that the base Pentagon budget request is for $525 billion, a modest $5 billion less than what was appropriated for the current fiscal year, and the Overseas Contingency Operation (OCO) account, which covers additional money for the Afghanistan and Pakistan is down from $115 billion to $88 billion for 2013. But there is much more to the story than what the raw numbers tell you.
Small steps in the right direction
The Obama administration deserves credit for getting the ball rolling with cuts to unnecessary programs. As Taxpayers for Common Sense points out, the administration is moving two brigades out of Europe, a place where it hardly makes sense to have a massive military presence. They are delaying the Ohio class ballistic missile submarine for two years and eliminating some funding for the failed missile defense program. Any taxpayer money saved on this kind of wasteful program that doesn’t serve an essential security function signifies a step in the right direction.
Taxpayers for Common Sense highlighted some program terminations in their analysis:
Today’s biggest news was probably the list of program terminations released with the White House budget request. DOD programs on that list include:
- C-27J cargo aircraft. The strategic review revealed that C-130s would do the job of flying equipment around overseas. DOD also decided to curtail its ambitious, $6 billion program to modernize the C130s. Savings: $480 million in FY12 alone.
- Defense Weather Satellite. This Air Force program was a spin-off of the National Polar Environmental Satellite, a prototype of DOD’s overloaded, over-budget satellite programs. Savings: $3.8 billion.
- High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV) capitalization. The Army had planned to upgrade 6,000 of the vehicles so they could be used in “air assault operations.” Documents admit the effort “would cost too much for a niche capability.” Savings: $489 million.
- Joint Air-to-ground Missile. This program has had a bulls-eye on its back for a while, owing to the fact that its function is essentially being filled by other missile programs. Savings: $1.6 billion.
- Sea-Based X-Band Radar – this missile defense program will go on “limited test support,” meaning it can be used in testing but won’t be operational due to its “costly, maintenance-intensive” platform. DOD officials said today they would trim the sea-based elements of missile defense but protect “homeland” programs and the European Phased Adaptive Approach. Savings: $500 million.
For more on what’s in and what’s out, see TCS’s full analysis and the Project on Government Oversight’s live blog.
Less is more—when cuts aren’t really cuts
While there is a modest decrease proposed for 2013 (about 2.3% in inflation-adjusted terms), the Pentagon’s five-year plan anticipates base military spending reaching $567 billion by FY17. These are only reductions in the sense that the Pentagon is spending less than they would have liked (and than the CBO had initially projected based on the Pentagon’s plans). This comes after historically high levels of spending, with military budgets increasing by almost two-thirds over the last decade.
More than one way to define security
There has been a lot of hyperbolic rhetoric thrown around about the threat to US global military dominance if cuts are made to our bloated military budget (and unfortunately Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has given right wing hawks plenty of ammunition by blabbing about the US becoming a “paper tiger”). Even if the additional $500 billion of sequestration cuts were put into place, that would only bring US military spending down to 2007 levels; you’d be hard pressed to find someone who’s going to credibly argue that the US was in grave danger at that time.
Aside from the fact that the US would still be the world’s most dominant military, vastly outspending all other countries around the globe, there is the larger question of defining security in more than one way. The equation is not simply number of billions spent=level of safety and security. The US has gone into debt spending more than $1 trillion on war in the last decade, with questionable security rationales. That’s on top of the steadily growing Pentagon budget.
How has it damaged our economic security to spend that money that could have gone to things like job creation? As a recent University of Massachusetts study points out, military spending is the least efficient way to create jobs. Where would our country be right now if we had invested even a fraction of that base military and war spending on infrastructure and education? Budgets for those programs will take a beating this year, while the Pentagon budget steadily rises.
Scratching the surface
Despite military spending enthusiasts’ attempts to frighten people away from cuts, many credible experts from both sides of the aisle have put together bolder plans for significant cuts that would not harm national security. The Sustainable Defense Task Force identified nearly $1 trillion in cuts over 10 years. Sen. Tom Coburn’s (R-OK) “Back in Black” plan also includes $1 trillion in cuts. The Domenici-Rivlin deficit reduction plan would have frozen defense spending for five years.
These cuts are easier to make when they are driven by a rethinking of US strategy—rather than preparing to fight massive ground wars, which haven’t done much for our security in the last decade, we should be focusing on the tools that most effectively address the threats we face. President Obama has said that the tide of war is receding, and our budget should reflect that. Previous post-war builddowns have seen military spending reductions of as much as 30%.
As James Traub points out in Foreign Policy, President Obama is actually to the right of conservatives on the issue of making significant cuts to military spending.
Using war money as a Pentagon slush fund
While the decrease in OCO funding is larger, that account still gets a huge chunk of money, and likely more than the administration actually needs to carry out operations in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region. The budget assumes that there would be 68,000 troops in Afghanistan through FY2013, but the president said steady withdrawals would continue after getting down to 68,000 this year, and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta recently announced that they would aim to end combat operations in mid-2013.
What this means is that if withdrawals progress, the extra money could essentially become a slush fund to move over base Pentagon expenses that didn’t fit in the regular budget, yet another way the “decreases” are not what they seem. Congress already used this trick last year, paying for $5 billion in base spending out of the war budget, and there’s no reason to think they won’t try it again.
Even modest cuts in danger
Get ready for a big fight over Pentagon spending this year. Republicans have now made it clear that they didn’t really mean it when they voted for a bill that would trigger an additional $500 billion in military spending cuts, despite the dismal outlook for a deal in the deficit super committee. Now they are scrambling to keep from lying in the bed they made for themselves. Sen. John McCain has introduced legislation to replace cuts in FY2013 through a federal employee pay freeze and attrition. Rep. Buck McKeon has introduced similar legislation in the House. A group of Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer, pushed back with a letter to the president opposing rolling back defense cuts.
That will be a major fight, but you’ll also see smaller battles over favored programs, and Sen. McCain has said he wants to undo even the modest cuts proposed by this administration.
There is a lot at stake in this fight for our economic and national security, and proponents of smart spending will have to be vigilant in holding Congress and the administration accountable to our priorities.
Deadline Friday: we need your help
Earlier this month, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta revealed that the US plans to end combat operations in Afghanistan in 2013, far ahead of schedule. The New York Times called it a “a major milestone toward ending a decade of war.”
But proponents of endless war aren’t going to give up, so we can’t either. Urge your representative to sign a letter to President Obama before Friday supporting this plan to accelerate the transition in Afghanistan.
We can’t rest on our laurels. Sen. John McCain, who yelled an ornery “NO!” during a vote on ending the war last year, said this decision gives “reassurance to our enemies.” And he’s not alone.
Your refusal to stop fighting for an end to this war brought us to where we are today. Now our voices must drown out the hawks who refuse to accept that it’s time to leave Afghanistan, and we have to act before the week is over. Urge your representative to show public support by signing on to the bipartisan McGovern/Jones letter on Afghanistan.
The administration’s decision is smart policy and smart politics. We need to make sure they don’t backtrack. That means pushing for an ever quicker, complete withdrawal so we can welcome our troops and tax dollars home. The deadline for the letter is only a few days away. Take action today.
Thank you.
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Put Nukes on the Chopping Block
“We need more nuclear weapons programs like Lady Gaga needs another outfit.”
That’s what Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) said yesterday, as he introduced a bill that would put a huge dent in the billions that are wasted on nuclear weapons every year, and halt plans to build new nuclear bomb factories.
Here is the video of Rep. Markey introducing his bill on House floor.
The bill has 35 cosponsors already. Click here to tell your representative to cosponsor H.R. 3974, the Smarter Approach to Nuclear Expenditures (SANE) Act.
The SANE Act would:
- Reduce the fleet of nuclear-armed submarines and cancel plans for new nuclear bombers and new nuclear missile systems
- Cancel the two new nuclear bomb plants that are being planned in New Mexico and Tennessee
- Make over a dozen other cuts to nuclear weapons programs
These and the other cuts in the bill would save up to $117 billion over the next ten years. Tell your representative to reduce our reliance on nuclear weapons and save money by supporting this bill today.
In the current deficit-cutting frenzy in Washington, crucial funding for things like Medicare are being threatened with massive cutbacks. Help us make sure that Congress makes the cuts where they are sorely needed. Click here now to tell your representative to cut billions from wasteful and dangerous nuclear weapons programs.
One Last Chance
We have an urgent opportunity to move closer to a nuclear weapons free world.
Every president gets one chance to revise and update US nuclear weapons strategy. That chance is coming in just a few weeks, when President Obama will make critical decisions about the role and size of the US nuclear arsenal. [1]
The president supports the vision of a nuclear weapons free world, and this could be his last opportunity as president to codify that vision, and put it in writing.
The president agrees with us about nuclear weapons, but not all those who influence him do. Many influential lawmakers are pushing the president to water his vision down. That’s why Peace Action West is part of a national campaign to make sure he hears from us. Groups all over the country are working to get thousands of messages to the president, and your message will be hand-delivered in a meeting with White House staff before the president makes his decision. Join thousands of activists from across the country and take action today.
The president’s nuclear weapons strategy review will help determine whether we continue to live with the threat of nuclear annihilation or move closer to a world without nuclear weapons. Click here now to put your support in writing, and ask the president to do the same.
Administration sneaks in arms sale to Bahrain
In response to push back from human rights groups and members of Congress, the Obama administration held off on an arms sale to the Bahraini government, pending an independent report on the crackdown on peaceful protesters that came out late last year.
Despite lingering concerns about implementation of any changes by the Bahraini government, the Obama administration used a sneaky move to proceed with a limited arms sale to Bahrain, circumventing Congress. Josh Rogin reports:
The State Department has not released details of the new sale, and Congress has not been notified through the regular process, which requires posting the information on the Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) website. The State Department simply briefed a few congressional offices and is going ahead with the new sale, arguing it didn’t meet the threshold that would require more formal notifications and a public explanation.
At today’s State Department press briefing, The Cable asked spokeswoman Victoria Nuland about the new sale. She acknowledged the new package but didn’t have any details handy.
Our congressional sources said that State is using a legal loophole to avoid formally notifying Congress and the public about the new arms sale. The administration can sell anything to anyone without formal notification if the sale is under $1 million. If the total package is over $1 million, State can treat each item as an individual sale, creating multiple sales of less than $1 million and avoiding the burden of notification, which would allow Congress to object and possibly block the deal.
Sanjeev Bery of Amnesty International USA explains why this sale is so troubling:
Given this record, Amnesty International finds these additional US arms sales to the Bahraini government troubling. Because the details are secret, it is difficult to independently determine whether the US government is providing the kinds of weapons, ammunition, and/or equipment that Bahraini security forces could use in the commission of further human rights violations.
It is worth noting that just four months ago, the Obama Administration proposed a $53 million arms sale (PDF) to Bahrain that included armored Humvees, tow missiles, and night vision goggles. In October of 2011, the State Department’s Victoria Nuland described that proposed sale as “designed to support the Bahraini military in its external defense function.”
Note the use of that same phrase – “external defense.”
For a Bahraini government with a track record of violating human rights, the difference between “external defense” and internal crackdowns may be less than obvious. Bahraini security forces already used military vehicles in the commission of human rights violations when they surrounded a hospital with tanks. Inside the hospital, doctors were treating wounded protestors. The doctors were arrested.
Eighteen representatives and three senators wrote to Secretary of State Clinton opposing the sale and arguing that the administration has not justified sending the arms given the documented human rights violations in Bahrain.
From both a security and a moral perspective, it is shortsighted (though unfortunately not atypical) for the US to reward countries that repress their own people. With a meeting on an international Arms Trade Treaty coming up this July, which would set global standards for weapons sales, it’s an important time to show our support for a policy that respects human rights.
“Truth, lies and Afghanistan”: a whistleblower speaks
All Americans have the right to hear the truth from our government and military leaders so we can make informed decisions about whether to invest lives and tax dollars in military entanglements. Our soldiers especially deserve this candor, as they are expected to risk their lives in service of a mission they are told is both achievable and necessary. Many of us who have been calling for a new strategy in Afghanistan have noted that the optimistic picture painted by the military does not square with many reports on the ground. Now we have a clear message that the situation in Afghanistan is far worse than military commanders would have us know, courtesy of Lt. Col. Daniel Davis—a whistleblower who, at great risk to his long military career, has exposed how the reality in Afghanistan doesn’t match the military’s trumped up progress reports.
Davis discusses the report he wrote (as of now, Army Public Affairs has not decided whether he can release the unclassified version publicly) in a piece in Armed Forces Journal. He shares incidents he witnessed traveling 9,000 miles around Afghanistan last year:
In August, I went on a dismounted patrol with troops in the Panjwai district of Kandahar province. Several troops from the unit had recently been killed in action, one of whom was a very popular and experienced soldier. One of the unit’s senior officers rhetorically asked me, “How do I look these men in the eye and ask them to go out day after day on these missions? What’s harder: How do I look [my soldier’s] wife in the eye when I get back and tell her that her husband died for something meaningful? How do I do that?”
One of the senior enlisted leaders added, “Guys are saying, ‘I hope I live so I can at least get home to R&R leave before I get it,’ or ‘I hope I only lose a foot.’ Sometimes they even say which limb it might be: ‘Maybe it’ll only be my left foot.’ They don’t have a lot of confidence that the leadership two levels up really understands what they’re living here, what the situation really is.”
While he is limited in what he can share with the public, Davis shares some representative experiences that bring him to the conclusion that the mission in Afghanistan is failing [emphasis mine]:
In all of the places I visited, the tactical situation was bad to abysmal. If the events I have described — and many, many more I could mention — had been in the first year of war, or even the third or fourth, one might be willing to believe that Afghanistan was just a hard fight, and we should stick it out. Yet these incidents all happened in the 10th year of war.
Davis ends his piece by condemning military leaders for withholding the truth from the American people:
If Americans were able to compare the public statements many of our leaders have made with classified data, this credibility gulf would be immediately observable. Naturally, I am not authorized to divulge classified material to the public. But I am legally able to share it with members of Congress. I have accordingly provided a much fuller accounting in a classified report to several members of Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, senators and House members…
…Likewise when having to decide whether to continue a war, alter its aims or to close off a campaign that cannot be won at an acceptable price, our senior leaders have an obligation to tell Congress and American people the unvarnished truth and let the people decide what course of action to choose. That is the very essence of civilian control of the military. The American people deserve better than what they’ve gotten from their senior uniformed leaders over the last number of years. Simply telling the truth would be a good start.
Davis’ report highlights how deference to the military in the public and Congress can be detrimental to US security and our ability to make the right decisions about war, as Martin Cook notes in the New York Times’ coverage of the report:
But Martin L. Cook, who teaches military ethics at the Naval War College, says Colonel Davis has identified a hazard that is intrinsic to military culture, in which a can-do optimism can be at odds with the strictest candor when a mission is failing.
“You’ve trained people to try to be successful even when half their buddies are dead and they’re almost out of ammo,” he said. “It’s very hard for them to say, ‘can’t do.’ ”
Lt. Col. Davis recognizes the potential backlash he faces, telling the Times, “I’m going to get nuked.” Davis briefed several members of Congress, and hopefully they will be able to shield Davis to some extent, and more importantly to ensure that these revelations get the attention they deserve and the leadership is held accountable. Republican Rep. Walter Jones (R-SC), one of the members who was briefed on the report, said “For Colonel Davis to go out on a limb and help us to understand what’s happening on the ground, I have the greatest admiration for him We owe a debt of gratitude to Davis for his brave stand.
The big question now is what the media and our political leaders do with this information. For the good of our nation, they should take Lt. Col. Davis’ message to heart: “How many more men must die in support of a mission that is not succeeding?”
In a pleasant departure from his hyperbolic defense of high levels of military spending. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced this week that the US and NATO are hoping to end “combat operations” in Afghanistan in mid-2013, rather than sometime in 2014 as they had implied earlier.
There has been much discussion about the political nature of this decision:
The Obama administration is betting that Americans are tired of the financial and human cost of the war and would welcome an exit strategy so long as they believed it ensured U.S. national security. Obama has asserted that the completion of the phased Iraq withdrawal, promised during his 2008 campaign, is evidence of U.S. strength and his own resolve.
Opposing the war in Afghanistan should be a no-brainer in this election. A solid majority of voters, including people of all political persuasions, support a military withdrawal. The main reason we’ve seen such an increase in congressional opposition to the war is that it is a foregone conclusion that the war is terribly unpopular; the phones in Congress are not ringing off the hook with people calling to urge a “stay the course” approach in Afghanistan.
But the decision the administration is making is not just smart from a political angle; it also makes the most sense for our security. A large ground force in Afghanistan is not going to protect us from a small group of potential terrorists dispersed around the globe. As the National Security Network points out, many security experts recognize it is time to shift to a new strategy in Afghanistan:
Defense experts: shifting the focus of the mission in Afghanistan from combat to training Afghan security forces is the best way to protect long-term U.S. interests. As Lieutenant General David W. Barno, USA (Ret.), Andrew Exum and Matthew Irvine of the Center for a New American Security wrote last December: “It is time for a change of mission in Afghanistan. U.S. and coalition forces must shift away from directly conducting counterinsurgency operations and toward a new mission of ‘security force assistance’: advising and enabling Afghan forces to take the lead in the counterinsurgency fight. This shift is more than rhetorical. With a 2014 transition looming in Afghanistan, U.S. and allied military leaders must recognize that U.S. and coalition forces will not defeat the Taliban and its allies in the next three years. Instead, they must direct the military effort toward working by, with and through the Afghans. This effort will protect long-term U.S. security interests without a never-ending commitment of immense U.S. resources.” This idea has currency inside the Pentagon as well. General John Allen, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, said last December he would accelerate the role played by Afghan security forces. [CNAS, 12/11. John Allen via NY Times, 12/13/11]
Despite the fact that this decision is both smart and necessary, leading Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has decided to attack it as naïve. As Alex Roarty points out in National Journal, it’s a bit puzzling that Romney would be “tethering himself to an unpopular agenda.” Though why not add squandering lives and dollars on an unnecessary and unpopular war to dismissing the plight of the poor and making awkward and inappropriate jokes? He still has to compete with ditching child labor laws and building moon colonies.
Of course Romney’s misguided support is based on specious policy grounds:
Conservatives immediately responded to Panetta’s announcement by criticizing the decision to further align U.S. commitment with our interests there. But they have criticized tactics – setting a date certain, specific withdrawal numbers – without offering an alternative policy that meets both realities on the ground and the war-weariness of Americans. As the Huffington Post’s Amanda Terkel wrote last month, “How do you win? Well, by beating your opponent, of course. And how do you beat your opponent? By winning. That tautology was essentially former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney’s answer when he was asked about how, as commander in chief, he would end the war in Afghanistan without talking to the Taliban.”
Romney complained that the US shouldn’t tell the people they’re fighting when they are going to pull out troops. Apparently Romney either thinks he is going to come up with a plan to eradicate the Taliban militarily, something that has eluded the US and NATO for more than ten years, or he is going to pull a fast one on the Taliban with a surprise withdrawal, leaving them so stunned and confused that they can’t retake power.
While this recent development is encouraging, this is hardly a time to take our foot off the gas in pushing for an end to the war. The White House downplayed Panetta’s announcement, saying only that it “could happen,” perhaps trying to have it both ways. During the announcement about shifting in 2013, Panetta also said there would be some kind of military presence in Afghanistan indefinitely. Despite the administration’s talking point that the “tide of war is receding,” there is still no clear end date for when all US troops will come home.
Also, as Mark Thompson explains on the Battleland blog, the distinction between combat and non-combat troops is a fuzzy one:
Yet shifting from a combat role to a training and assist role – what Panetta wants to happen sometime next year – is a fuzzy line that commanders can blur for certain units and in certain provinces. “A shift in mission statement has been talked about for several months, and that not much may change on the ground,” says an officer heading into the fight shortly. “The mission statement can say partnering/mentoring instead of combat, but if a Afghan-U.S. patrol gets in a fight, those U.S. troops will still fight the same way they were doing before. A lot of that is already going on.”
This announcement is an important sign that all of our work over the last couple of years is bearing fruit—the administration sees the writing on the wall and is looking for a way to end the war. Now we must be vigilant and make sure they don’t cave to the pressure of the Romneys and McCains of the world and instead listen to the clear voice of the majority of Americans and put Afghans in control of their own future.
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. 
Katie Heald, Deputy Political Director. Katie is the national coordinator of the Campaign for a Nuclear Weapons Free World. 
