* After eight long years of war, we speak in unity: U.S. Military forces must be brought home.
* Military victory appears unachievable, or at the very least unsustainable.
* Our continued presence guarantees further escalation of long-standing anti-American sentiments.
* A surge in U.S. troop numbers will generate dramatic increases of casualties of our troops and Afghani civilians.
* We risk and even wider and deadlier regional conflict.
* Reconstruction and stability should be initiated and sustained by international peace-keeping entities and non-governmental organizations.
* Urgent domestic budget priorities demand a redirection of our tax revenues from war in Afghanistan to meeting human needs at home. Thirteen million Americans are unemployed in this economic downturn.
* We petition Congress, and the Obama administration, to initiate withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan before the end of the year.
Obama's decision to send more troops to Afghanistan has been compared by some pundits to the late President Lyndon Johnson's disastrous decision to escalate the Vietnam War. The negative results and public fallout of that decision most likely led Johnson to not seek a second term in office.
The right-wing gets to have it both ways at this point. Obama continues to validate the right-wing's radical, perpetual war ideology at the same time he endures the group's bizarre criticisms that he's an anti-military socialist or that he's not even an American citizen.
Obama continues to alienate many voters who elected him to office in 2008. The disparity between how much hope Obama inspired in his campaign and the reality of his easy capitulation to right-wing vested interests from Wall Street bankers to the military-industrial complex is increasing political cynicism among his strongest supporters. |
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