Tag Archives: Afghanistan

Historians Against the War statements on Military Resistance and Escalation in Afghanistan

The HAW Steering Committee has voted to adopt the following two statements related to the war in Afghanistan.

Statement on military resistance:

This statement was submitted by Staughton Lynd and approved by the HAW Steering Committee. Correspondence on it should be sent to another member of the Steering Committee.

Historians Against the War supports soldiers in the United States military who refuse to fight in Afghanistan, either as conscientious objectors or on the grounds that the United States is committing war crimes forbidden by Nuremburg and the Army Field Manual, such as the use of drone aircraft in Pakistan.

Statement on Escalation in Afghanistan:

This statement originated in a draft suggested by Herbert Shapiro, emeritus history professor at the University of Cincinnati. It was amended somewhat in discussions within the Steering Committee and adopted.

Historians Against War (HAW) expresses its opposition to the escalation of the Afghanistan War announced by President Obama in his December 1 speech at West Point. Once again we are told the United States must increase its commitment of human and material resources in support of a government, steeped in corruption, that fails to demonstrate support of a majority of its country’s population.

In his speech, President Obama took issue with any claim that Afghanistan is another Vietnam. The two conflicts are not carbon copies of each other but there are distinct similarities. And if we go on with the Afghan War it may be that we have not fully learned the lessons of Vietnam.

The Vietnamese would not yield to a counter-insurgency that believed sending increasing numbers of troops, dropping more and more napalm upon them, and flying more bombing runs was a formula for victory. They would not yield to a strategy that could not distinguish between soldiers and civilians and pretended that a discredited Saigon regime had the support of the people over whom it ruled.

In Afghanistan we once more follow the path of escalation, inflicting “collateral” damage on a civilian population and propping up a corrupt government. In the present war we once more adopt a “guns not butter” policy, making war while undermining our ability to devote the resources needed to make the economic reforms so urgently needed at home.

Afghanistan’s own recent history provides further reason for opposing the Obama administration’s current course of action. The Soviet experience of the late 1970s and early 1980s dramatically reinforced Afghanistan’s role as the “graveyard of empires.” At the same time, U.S. intervention in the form of aid to the most reactionary anti-Soviet forces helped lay the groundwork for the emergence of al-Qaeda.

HAW urges a change in direction. We need an Afghanistan policy that includes a full, early, and orderly withdrawal of U.S. military forces, economic assistance to Afghani civil society, and a relinquishment of any project for permanent U.S. bases.

Why liberals kill and other links to articles recommended by Historians Against the War

Links to Recent Articles of Interest

“Obama’s Folly”
By Andrew Bacevich, War in Context website, from the Los Angeles Times, December 3

“The President Has Drawn the Wrong Lessons From His Understanding of the History of War”
Interview with Andrew Bacevich on Democracy Now, posted December 2

“Obama’s Surge: Has the President Been Misled by the Iraq Analogy?”
By Juan Cole, Salon.com. posted December 1
A detailed analysis of circumstances that gave the Iraq “surge” the appearance of success, and of how circumstances in Afghanistan are different.

“Afghanistan: The Roach Motel of Empires”
By Zoltan Grossman, AfterDowningStreet.com, posted December 2

“Afghanistan Fact Sheet: The Numbers Behind the Troop Increase”
By the National Priorities Project, posted December 1

“A Better Way to Kill? Human Terrain Systems, Anthropologists and the War in Afghanistan”
By David Price, CounterPunch.org, posted December 1

“It’s Obama’s War Now”
By Gary Leupp, CounterPunch.org, posted November 30
The author teaches history at Tufts University; despite its title, the article is mainly historical.

“The Soviet Occupation of Afghanistan Through CIA Eyes: Lessons for the United States Today”
By Bennett Ramberg, Huffington Post, posted November 24

Bill Moyers’ Journal, November 20 – on escalation in Vietnam
Public Broadcasting System, November 20
On Lyndon Johnson’s decision making on Vietnam in the mid-1960s, using excerpts from President Johnson’s taped phone conversations with top advisors. The video of this program can be accessed here.

“Why Liberals Kill”
By Thad Russell, The Daily Beast, posted October 17
a broad-brush analysis of the liberal foreign policy tradition from a libertarian conservative perspective

Suggestions for inclusion in these lists are welcome: they can be sent to jimobrien48@gmail.com. Members of the working group for this project are Matt Bokovoy, Carolyn (Rusti) Eisenberg, Jim O’Brien, Maia Ramnath, and Sarah Shields

Rouge Forum Update: Sky Falling Fast; Resistance Rising Too!

Full update here: Rouge Forum Update: Sky Falling Fast; Resistance Rising Too!

Dear Friends,

There have been at least 16 occupations seeking to rescue education from the ruling classes in California this month, and more to come. UC Irvine next. Germany, Austria, and France also witnessed fight-backs coming from united students and workers.

To date, the only organized school voice in the US that recognizes the current crises as class war is the Rouge Forum–which may speak well for us, or not so well for others who, so far, hold onto wisps of unfounded hope made up of the shreds of democracy and citizenship in the USA.

The direct action occupations and the defenders outside the buildings up the ante for thought and action in schools and in the streets, demonstrating the violence behind capitalist democracy; overcoming the alienated notion that people other than us will save us.

See the Rouge Forum blog linked above for a more complete update.

Good luck to us, every one,
r

“Community and resistance—or imperial barbarism”

Below is note from Rich Gibson (San Diego State University) on the anniversary of the US war in Afghanistan.

Dear Friends,

Today is the 8th Anniversary of the US assault on Afghanistan, a full invasion, war, in response to a crime.

In my section A section of the New York Times (CA) , there is no mention of that.

Since then, $12.9 trillion was given to the banks. The wars will cost around $3 trillion if they project into next year, as they will.

The government became a full blown corporate state, an executive committee and armed weapon of the rich. Schools merged with the effort, becoming full-blown missions for capitalism. Those educators who collaborated became, knowingly or not, its missionaries.

The American public, having agreed to shop during Bush’s wars, can no longer shop. The US economy, 2/3 rooted in consumerism, cannot consume, nor produce, and the banks will not loan to the unemployed. Spectacles continue, more and faster. Baseball! Football! Porn!!

The demagogue, Obama and his friend, Arne Duncan, now throw the Bush agenda for education into hyperspeed: Regimented curricula promoting witless nationalism, anti working class high stakes exams, militarization, layoffs and cutbacks, some privatization, and, with perfect logic, merit pay.

The union leadership of every major union cooperated at every turn, played a significant role in electing Obama, in harmony with their Quisling roles of the past. They are the nearest and most vulnerable of workers’ enemies. Harsh measures for them.

Professional organizations accepted the division of academic labor they represent; remained largely impotent. Historians talked to historians, wrote a few petitions, rarely crossed the hall to deal with the sociologists. Some took up petitions, begging.

The rich grew much richer as barbarism rose. The poor became much poorer. Segmented by race, class, gender, split against each other by reactionary unions, now we see impoverished people battling for scraps.

The education agenda is a war agenda. The core issue of our time is the reality of the promise of endless war and booming inequality met by the potential of mass, activist, class conscious resistance, connecting reason to real power.

The youth at the occupation of UCSC point the way. Having a good school within this capitalist society is like having a reading room in a prison. Not acceptable.

The choice is clear enough. Community and resistance—or Imperial Barbarism.

Up the rebels!

Good luck to us, every one.

r

Pilger: How We are Prepared for Another War of Aggression

In a piece titled “The Lying Game: How We are Prepared for Prepared for Another War of Aggression,” journalist John Pilger compares the current drum-beating for war against Iran, based on a fake “nuclear threat”, with the manufacture of a sense of false crisis that led to invasion of Iraq and the deaths of 1.3 million people.

Obama is giving us what he promised: war in Afghanistan. The expansion strategy and the public’s distaste for ware are nearly mirror images of the run-up to Bush’s fiasco in Iraq.

Obama’s “showdown” with Iran has another agenda. On both sides of the Atlantic the media have been tasked with preparing the public for endless war. The US/Nato commander General Stanley McChrystal says 500,000 troops will be required in Afghanistan over five years, according to America’s NBC. The goal is control of the “strategic prize” of the gas and oilfields of the Caspian Sea, central Asia, the Gulf and Iran – in other words, Eurasia. But the war is opposed by 69 per cent of the British public, 57 per cent of the US public and almost every other human being. Convincing “us” that Iran is the new demon will not be easy. McChrystal’s spurious claim that Iran “is reportedly training fighters for certain Taliban groups” is as desperate as Brown’s pathetic echo of “a line in the sand”.

During the Bush years, according to the great whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, a military coup took place in the US, and the Pentagon is now ascendant in every area of American foreign policy. A measure of its control is the number of wars of aggression being waged simultaneously and the adoption of a “first-strike” doctrine that has lowered the threshold on nuclear weapons, together with the blurring of the distinction between nuclear and conventional weapons.

All this mocks Obama’s media rhetoric about “a world without nuclear weapons”. In fact, he is the Pentagon’s most important acquisition. His acquiescence with its demand that he keep on Bush’s secretary of “defence” and arch war-maker, Robert Gates, is unique in US history. He has proved his worth with escalated wars from south Asia to the Horn of Africa. Like Bush’s America, Obama’s America is run by some very dangerous people. We have a right to be warned. When will those paid to keep the record straight do their job?