Iraq, Afghanistan & Pakistan

Below is a letter to the editor I wrote, which was recently printed in the Register-Guard. Below that is a petition to the Oregon Congressional delegation from Eugene PeaceWorks, posted on the Oregon Progressive Network website.

If you live in Oregon, I suggest following the link provided to sign the petition. I encourage readers in other states to contact your senators and representative and tell them to vote no on all war funding. They all have websites where you can fill in a simple form and send them a message. It only takes a few minutes. I always keep it short. You can find their websites by Googling their names. If you don’t know who they are, see http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/.

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What our government is doing in Afghanistan and Pakistan is completely insane.

The war in Afghanistan never made any sense in the first place. Now we’re expanding it into Pakistan, destabilizing a country that has nuclear weapons.

Nothing seems to matter but keeping the U.S. on top. On top of what, a mountain of bones and rubble?

Since Congress and Obama are incapable of rational thought, we have to tell them that if they continue this war we will vote against them in 2010.

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Please visit  Oregon Progressive Network to sign the following petition to the Oregon Congressional delegation.

Congress will shortly be voting on a supplemental funding bill for the wars in Iraq and Afghanstan. They will also be considering a fiscal year 2010 Defense appropriations bill that will include funding for the wars.

Petition to Oregon Congressional delegation to cut war funding

Please vote against all further funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is the only practical way Congress can stop these wars.

Both wars are immoral and illegal, because neither qualifies as self-defense.

Iraq had not harmed the U.S. before our invasion, and was not a threat to us. Even if one believed in the presence of Iraqi WMDs, all we had to do was leave the U.N. inspectors in place to finish their work.

The 9/11 attack on the U.S. was not carried out by the Iraqi or the Afghan people. As a pretext for a U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, the Taliban was accused of “harboring” Al Qaeda. The U.S. has effectively imposed years of collective punishment on the Afghan people, who have no mechanism for collective responsibility. A tribal society living in small villages in mountain valleys, many do not see themselves as a nation, nor do they function as one.

According to one study, the U.S. may have caused the deaths of a million people in Iraq, and thousands in Afghanistan. Continuing this wanton destruction cannot be justified. Likewise, there is no justification for the deaths and wounding of thousands of American soldiers, many of them working-class people who enlisted because they had no way to make a decent living as civilians.

These wars are also ruinously expensive, driving this country ever more deeply into debt. Trying to maintain an ever-expanding American empire, the U.S. is spending its way into bankruptcy.

We ask that you take a stand to stop these wars by refusing to pay for them any longer.