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Dear President Obama: Get Us Out of Afghanistan
Dear President Obama,
Let's get rid of the easy part first.
I voted for you joyfully.
Let's get to the hard part now.
You are absolutely wrong about your policy in Afghanistan.
Let me tell you why.
My brother, Abraham Zelmanowitz, was on the 27th floor of the North Tower on September 11th, 2001. Although he could have easily escaped, he chose instead to stay with his friend and coworker Ed Bayea, a paraplegic in a wheelchair, who could not leave. My brother told all who passed them on their way down that he would wait with Ed until help came. They both died.
President Bush cited my brother when he spoke at the National Cathedral on the Friday following that day of horror. It was then that I knew this country would use my brother's death to invade and bring death to Afghan civilians as innocent as my brother and I was appalled.
I was offered the opportunity to go to Afghanistan in Jan. 2002 and along with 3 other Americans who had lost a family member I went.
Here in the United States we were told that what we were doing there would liberate the Afghan women and offer them the rights to live their lives in accordance with western standards and that the strict laws the Taliban imposed on them would disappear.
When I arrived in Kabul, because our troops had routed the Taliban from that city, I found safe streets in which I could walk without fear. But I also found that women, if they did venture into the street, were universally clad in their burkas. I did not see one woman, not one, without a burka.
We spent 2 weeks there. We met with many families who had lost loved ones when our bombs hit the wrong targets. We visited a hospital, partially destroyed, where we saw young children who had mistaken cluster bombs for food packages, who were missing limbs. We visited orphanages full of children who no longer had parents. We went out of Kabul to tent cities full of families who could no longer live on their land because cluster bombs circled them. We went to schools where children, both boys and girls, were beginning to be taught again in most distressing circumstances. We met with interim ambassador Ryan Crocker in the US embassy, just recently opened. Universally the people of Afghanistan were friendly, lovely people who welcomed us with "three cups of tea" immediately.
When we returned home we lobbied both for an Afghan victims fund and to tell our legislators what we had learned there. We told them that unless we started reconstructing the lives of these people immediately, there would be no way for them to earn a living but to start planting and trafficking in poppies. That unless we started a system that gave the Afghans, not foreign workers, the jobs in the reconstruction that needed to begin immediately. This is what the Afghans told us and it turns out of course, they were right.
We in the US government did not listen. We treated this war in the same way we had waged all our other wars. It was a zero sum game to us.
You spoke to Hamid Karzai yesterday. You told him I assume that the new Afghan Women's Law is unacceptable.
If you are surprised that this law was passed, I am deeply disappointed in you.
I do not have a Harvard degree and am nowhere as intelligent as you are, but I am not surprised that it was passed.
Our actions for the past 7 years in that country insured that we would come to this point where in order to get the cooperation of the Taliban to start a dialog; just such a law would HAVE to be passed. Are you willing to dishonor the women of Afghanistan too?
What more can we do to these Afghan people?
Get us out of there now.
- Posted in
12 Comments so far
Show AllHelloooo.... He's not listening. He's surrounded himself with people who are invested in death, destruction, machismo, and money and who bill themselves as experts in matters of dealing with the rest of the world. For every argument you present, or MADRE presents, these people come up with a counterargument. They are on the inside and get heard. You are on the outside and you will not be heard, and your views will be described as naive, and you will be described as not having all the information the insiders have. The hopes Obama planted in us during the election campaign are history. They've been buried by the same sort of narrow-minded, power driven, territorial arrogance of previous administrations. Obama sees what these insiders want him to see. The curtain is drawn. The man becomes blinder and deafer by the day. It's the way the United States Government and the Presidency work.
Sioux Rose
RICG: You raise excellent points. I would only add that a lot of conditioning has gone on for a very long time that's made it possible for so many to look away. Even today the Fundamentalist Baptist church was BEHIND the wars of aggression, so when we see religion stepping up to the plate to SUPPORT war and carnage, we know something is VERY wrong with the teachings people have been given. Religious conditioning, like family mores, starts before the individual's mind is sufficiently developed to present counter-arguments. And George Lakoff made quite a compelling case for the strict family model (father as head, top-down driven) giving rise to lifetime advocates of conservative politics, in contrast with the nurturant family model that breeds independent thought (progressives) in its progeny.
Normally the human conscience which in theory would be substantiated by spiritual convictions would stand against willful carnage, especially as official state policy. So when religion pre-empts that response by suggesting instead, and quite erroneously, that said carnage is God's will (remember all the talk of Bush being a man of God, a believer, and such... the question should have been believer in what? His species of belief, like those of that imbecile Boykin high up in the military was some competitive view of God, not unlike team-based blood sport competition among warriors) and thus part of a Divine plan.
I often think the exceptionally poor judgment calls on the part of Blair, Bush and others (maybe even Obama) is a testament to their earnest belief in end times. If it's all going to end, why not party hard and use all the resources up while you have a chance? What other possible rationale exists for such irresponsible misuse and care-less carnage?
Ditto ricg . . . Barry-O's not listening.
Ditto the ditto.
The last republican president I ever that was worth a shit was dwight david eisenhower and what makes me think of him as being special is that even with his tarnished terms of presidency, he did open his eyes and realize the danger in what he named the 'military industrial congressional complex'. I don't have much sympathy for anyone that tries to convert at the end of life, presidential terms or whatever especially when they should be prosecuted for their illegal activities but eisenhower did try to warn us. It was even then, also, that it was a warning already too late. Thing is, eisenhower did put a name to it and there is no ambiguity in who it involves. The ambiguity is why these people are allowed to get away with what we allow them to do, not just day after day or month after month, but year after year and decades of it. The most frustrating thing about w & dick's term were the obvious illegality of both 4 year terms and the blatant crimes they committed with the military industrial congressional complex, and the people of this country looking on in silent approval. In short, we watched the demise of our country and very very few raised a finger much less a voice to stop it. Those are the real heros to me. But how does this get fixed?
The only way I can see to stop the war is for Congress to force Obama to get out by cutting the funding. The only way Congress will do that is if we push them to.
A new war funding supplemental bill is coming up shortly, yet I'm not seeing any organized effort to get Congress to vote against it. Instead the organized peace movement, such as it is, is advocating stopping the surge, congressional hearings, and diplomacy. What are they afraid of, that peace activists might turn against a Democratic president? Isn't it about time?
See http://tinyurl.com/warfunding
Rita my dear, Barry already made it clear last year on the campaign trail that we'd screw up even more in Afghanistan. I hate to break your heart but your vote for Obama was a vote to screw up even more in Afghanistan. The letter you sent to him is great but getting him to take it seriously is as easy as trying to get a pig out of the mud when he won't budge. Like the Republicans, most Democrats will shut the door on our faces once our votes are given to them, well until next election but they never learn.
"a system that gave the Afghans, not foreign workers, the jobs in the reconstruction that needed to begin immediately." "We in the US government did not listen."
We on the far left demanded Afghanis and Iraqis get the reconstruction jobs. Meanwhile, Senator O'Bamba wrote blank checks to the imperial chimp knowing full well the chimp was depriving Afghanis and Iraqis reconstruction jobs. That was in fact the prime catalyst of the Iraqi insurgency. O'Bamba was rewarded by USan voters with keys to the oval orifice.
It is sad to say, but every vote for Barack Obama was a vote for continued killing and war. (There were real antiwar candidates) Barack Obama never claimed to be antiwar, he just let the American people believe that myth.
President Obama has expanded the war in Afghanistan. He is expanding the size of our fighting forces, and he is using every domestic issue before him to keep the war off of the front pages of our newspapers and out of the minds of the American public. Out of sight and out of mind wars continue to make many in America rich.
The super slick salesman pulled the wool over the American peoples eyes and like I have said many times: The definition of political insanity: voting for the same two party duopoly over and over again and expecting a different result! The sheeple fooled again! Will they ever learn?
So call a Gnr'l Stryke - right from here. Nobody goes to work on Wednesday the X Day - we call in sick "Sorry boss, puking and vomiting and diarrhea all night long. Not in today." Call and leave the message at 5am (can't argue with a message) - SICK OUT. And maybe somebody decides to sit down that day with 100000 of their close friends in the middle of Main Street - every Main Street - in waves.
1. Out of Iraq/Afghanistan NOW.
2. Single Payer NOW
3. Card Check NOW
If we hit those points, it will start an avalanche. Out of Iraq/Afghanistan puts our Thumb in the eye of the MIC and frees BILLIONS AND BILLIONS of our $$$ to work here at home; Conyers Medicare for all DESTROYS the Corporate lock on Health Care and frees massive sums not spent on corporate richfilth animals: Card Check - as originally written - changes the balance of power in the workplace. Those three will shatter the dam.
I'm tired of talking folks. It is past time we reminded these animals of what real Americans are about when they get fed up with richfilth bullies who think they own our world. THEY DON'T, we've just let them use it a lot longer than we should have. WE HAVE CHANGED OUR MIND.
Our parents and grandparents did not fight Adolf Hitler so that we could lay down for the grandchildren of the double Traitor Prescott Bush, and his current Overseer. No more Richfilth Traitors making our country a land of torturers, usurers, and degraded despots.
WE ARE NOT ENTERTAINED!!
People have asked me about 3 Tags instead of just the 1: Out of Iraq/Afghanistan; Single Payer; and Card Check; Here are the reasons:
1. Any single stick can be broken, put 3 together not even the strongest can break it.
2. There is no confusion about what they mean. OUT means OUT. Single Payer is already written. Card Check is written and known (before the dims and our POTUS proceed to mangle and rape it to death).
3. Every single one of these shifts the balance of power from the corporations to us. Card Check in the workplace; Single Payer in health care; and Out of Iraq, the MIC. Every single one puts money in our pocket, puts power in our hands, and frees money to rebuild this broken country.
4. Each of the 3 has major constituencies it brings to the table: Anti-War (all of us); Health Care (all of us); and Labor (all of us).
And all we have to do is stay home and buy nothing.
10 million, 20 million, 30 million adults stay home from work.
Workplace Empty
Schools Empty
Colleges Empty
Stores Empty
Freeways Empty
Silence that will shock the world and change American history.
And no marginally literate high school graduate with a badge and a gun, "just following orders" gets to degrade a Citizen or shoot them in the face with rubber bullets or push their face into the pavement and taser them as punishment merely for standing up as a Citizen.
Remember the song from "Old Blue Eyes"? "Start spreadin' the news..."
We have every reason to be afraid that Obama will repeat Lyndon Johnson's fate when he pushed on with the Vietnam war. The parallels are frightening: an unpopular war in a country whose corrupt government is not worth defending, an elusive, dedicated and fanatic enemy fighting in its own terrene against foreign invaders, and the inevitability of many dead U.S. soldiers.
It is true that Obama is more charismatic, a Camelot-inheritor who resembles Kennedy more than he does Johnson. And he knows how to make inspiring political gestures. But already there is an humanitarian crisis on the Afghan – Pakistani border caused by U.S., drone-delivered bombs (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article6036512.ece).
I fear for how Obama will be able to deliver on his many promises if he, too, becomes a “war president”. But I’m not cynical either, and I applaud this man who has become an icon of the Twentieth Century’s conscience.