Be A Friend For Peace In Afghanistan

October 09, 2012

Is it possible to find 2 Million Friends?

2 million Afghans have already died in the past four decades of war in Afghanistan. And war still rages on with the continuing military action of the U.S. and its NATO allies. The Afghan Peace Volunteers are asking us to help them find 2 million friends to join them in a call for peace in Afghanistan. The initiative calls on ordinary citizens of all countries to join with Afghan citizens, who are tired of corruption, hatred and war, to be friends.

Massacre Demonstrates Failure of War

March 14, 2012

As is increasingly evidenced by developments in Afghanistan from
gloomy intelligence reports to the Quran burning to the recent massacre
of 16 Afghan civilians, including nine children, it is long past time
for the U.S. military to leave that country.

After weeks of tumultuous upheaval, the slaying allegedly by a U.S. Army Staff Sergeant is just the most recent incident undermining U.S. objectives to win hearts and minds. Frankly, that mission has long been lost.

We are still learning
about the Staff Sergeant, a married father of two. It appears he was
deployed to both Iraq and Afghanistan a total of four times. On one of
those tours, he suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI), but was
declared “fit for duty” by the U.S. Army. Afghans would certainly beg to
differ. This is also more evidence that the U.S. military cannot be
allowed to deploy troops with diagnosed psychological issues—such as
Post Traumatic Stress or TBIs, a messaged pushed by a project called Operation Recovery.

The media has tried hard to paint this incident as an isolated
deranged U.S. soldier committing murder—the “bad apple” theory. While
the heinousness of the massacre is seemingly rare, the terror and rage
it creates among ordinary Afghans is not. After ten years of this war
and some 40 years of conflict, Afghans are endlessly affected by the
suffering and violence in their country.

Yet this also alludes to something larger than just the “bad apple”
theory. If I learned one lesson in Iraq, it was that violence—whether by
us or those resisting our presence—only caused more violence. Moreover,
the violence was accompanied by something worse: the dehumanization of
the “other.” That happens on both sides. War doesn’t just rob the
occupied of their humanity; it robs the occupier of theirs too. And this
is why humankind cannot continue to wage senseless wars that accomplish
nothing but death and destruction.

So it is this simple.
War cannot bring peace because war is only violence which exacerbates
all the things that undermine peace. That should now be clear as
anti-Afghan war sentiment in the U.S. has reached a tipping point.

Some 60% of those recently polled believe the war is not worth fighting. Congress is listening. 88 members of the House and 24 senators recently sent letters to president Obama calling for an expedited withdrawal. The White House is also reportedly now debating the pace of the drawdown. We support H.R.780 by Barbara Lee (CA), the “Responsible Withdrawal from Afghanistan Act.”

U.S. troops must withdrawal because they are not leverage for peace
and stability, but exacerbating violence and tensions. The
solution—inevitably messy—to the conflict in Afghanistan (different from
the U.S. war) will be political. We should not abandon Afghanistan, but
U.S. troops have no role in political negotiations. Afghan self
determination can only be realized in the absence of foreign troops.

I cannot say it better than Washington Post Columnist Eugene Robinson: “It’s their country, not ours. In increasingly clear language, Afghans are telling us to leave. We should listen and oblige.”

Video report: Three VFP Chapter 109 members return from a month in Afghanistan. Met with Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers and taught bio-sand water filter construction.

November 06, 2011

Jody Mackey, Douglas Mackey, and Larry Kerschner, active VFP109 members, spent a month in Afghanistan promoting friendship and peace with the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers. They also taught biosand water filter construction to bring clean water in a country where there is high mortality rates due to water-borne diseases.

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Veterans For Peace Issues Position Statement on the Tenth Anniversary of the War and Occupation of Afghanistan

October 05, 2011

Veterans For Peace Statement on the Tenth Anniversary of the War and Occupation of Afghanistan

There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part.

Mario Savio December 3, 1964

Before the smoke had dissipated from the rubble of the Twin Towers and the Pentagon’s west block had stopped smoldering, a sweeping veil of fear and hysteria was drawn across our collective consciousness shortly after October 6th, 2001. The linchpin for a lost decade was set.

Where were you, what were you doing when you heard about the intervention in Afghanistan? Osama Bin Laden was hiding in plain sight and jubilant as he watched US vengeance reap the wild wind of misguided patriotism, and as if by design this country’s economic collapse succeeded beyond OBL’s wildest dreams.

Before the first SEAL team round caught the jihadist between the eyes, there was time enough for countless futures at home to be laid waste by a maelstrom of debt, and Congressional cowards looking no further than the next campaign contributions for solutions.

Ten long years have passed, a sufficient timeline for a fearful new lexicon to take hold during the morass caused by US exceptionalism. None of us certainly had ever heard of WMD. A drone was a honeybee. Now collateral damage and IED roll off the tongues of brainwashed preteens and adolescents, of either sex, on schoolyards and high school cafeterias, where the next wars start – or maybe the next Movement.

Cries have been resonating for this week’s 10-year observance of a seemingly endless US war and occupation to be more than another page torn from a calendar. They now echo from other Freedom Plazas and Liberty Squares across the country, a universal outrage tearing at the fabric of indifference and malaise woven deftly for so long by other Administrations and other corporate overlords, for scores of other lost decades.

The time to force radical change, to “make salt” in the non-violent tradition of Gandhi and King, is now. The machines wrought by war and greed will soon grind to a halt, by the sheer numbers of this new Movement.

Veterans For Peace enthusiastically joins the thousands in the streets of DC and New York and hundreds of other Occupies nationwide willing to confront the gears and levers of the apparatus to make it stop, to create a new world, for the next decade and beyond.

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