Should NATO Be Handling World Security? Peace Action board member Larry Wittner on Huffington Post

So, I was planning to write a post-NATO Summit op-ed (and we may well have more reports, photos, etc. on our terrific work in Chicago soon) but hadn’t gotten around to it. Which is just as well, because Peace Action board member Larry Wittner published this very comprehensive yet concise piece about NATO on Huffington Post. Here it is:

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (better known as NATO) is in the news once again thanks to a NATO Summit meeting in Chicago over the weekend of May 19-20 and to large public demonstrations in Chicago against this military pact.

NATO’s website defines the alliance’s mission as “Peace and Security,” and shows two children lying in the grass, accompanied by a bird, a flower and the happy twittering of birds. There is no mention of the fact that NATO is the world’s most powerful military pact, or that NATO nations account for 70 percent of the world’s annual $1.74 trillion in military spending.

The organizers of the demonstrations, put together by peace and social justice groups, assailed NATO for bogging the world down in endless war and for diverting vast resources to militarism.According to a spokesperson for one of the protest groups, Peace Action: “It’s time to retire NATO and form a new alliance to address unemployment, hunger, and climate change.”

NATO was launched in April 1949, at a time when Western leaders feared that the Soviet Union, if left unchecked, would invade Western Europe. The U.S. government played a key role in organizing the alliance, which brought in not only West European nations, but the United States and Canada. Dominated by the United States, NATO had a purely defensive mission — to safeguard its members from military attack, presumably by the Soviet Union.

That attack never occurred, either because it was deterred by NATO’s existence or because the Soviet government had no intention of attacking in the first place. We shall probably never know.

In any case, with the end of the Cold War and the disappearance of the Soviet Union, it seemed that NATO had outlived its usefulness.

But vast military establishments, like other bureaucracies, rarely just fade away. If the original mission no longer exists, new missions can be found. And so NATO’s military might was subsequently employed to bomb Yugoslavia, to conduct counter-insurgency warfare in Afghanistan, and to bomb Libya. Meanwhile, NATO expanded its membership and military facilities to East European nations right along Russia’s border, thus creating renewed tension with that major military power and providing it with an incentive to organize a countervailing military pact, perhaps with China.

None of this seems likely to end soon. In the days preceding the Chicago meeting, NATO’s new, sweeping role was highlighted by Oana Lungescu, a NATO spokesperson, who announced that the Summit would “discuss the Alliance’s overall posture in deterring and defending against the full range of threats in the 21st century, and take stock of NATO’s mix of conventional, nuclear, and missile defense forces.”

In fairness to NATO planners, it should be noted that, when it comes to global matters, they are operating in a relative vacuum. There are real international security problems, and some entity should certainly be addressing them.

But is NATO the proper entity? After all, NATO is a military pact, dominated by the United States and composed of a relatively small group of self-selecting European and North American nations. The vast majority of the world’s countries do not belong to NATO and have no influence upon it. Who appointed NATO as the representative of the world’s people? Why should the public in India, in Brazil, in China, in South Africa, in Argentina, or most other nations identify with the decisions of NATO’s military commanders?

The organization that does represent the nations and people of the world is the United Nations. Designed to save the planet from “the scourge of war,” the United Nations has a Security Council (on which the United States has permanent membership) that is supposed to handle world security issues. Unlike NATO, whose decisions are often controversial and sometimes questionable, the United Nations almost invariably comes forward with decisions that have broad international support and, furthermore, show considerable wisdom and military restraint.

The problem with UN decisions is not that they are bad ones, but that they are difficult to enforce. And the major reason for the difficulty in enforcement is that the Security Council is hamstrung by a veto that can be exercised by any one nation. Thus, much like the filibuster in the U.S. Senate, which is making the United States less and less governable, the Security Council veto has seriously limited what the world organization is able to do in addressing global security issues.

Thus, if the leaders of NATO nations were really serious about providing children with a world in which they could play in peace among the birds and flowers, they would work to strengthen the United Nations and stop devoting vast resources to questionable wars.

Lawrence Wittner is Professor of History emeritus at SUNY/Albany. His latest book is “Working for Peace and Justice: Memoirs of an Activist Intellectual” (University of Tennessee Press).

New York Times LTE re NATO and the pro-peace majority

Generally speaking the pro-peace events in Chicago surrounding the NATO war summit have been very good, and we’ve been getting superb media coverage. Photos, reports etc to come soon.  Here’s my letter to the editor in yesterday’s New York Times (I believe it was only online, not in the “hard copy” of the paper).

To the Editor:

While you paint a fair portrait of the NATO summit meeting in Chicago this weekend, you miss a key point. The “protesters” descending on the city represent the solid pro-peace constituency in the country. Every recent poll shows a large bipartisan majority supporting a rapid end to the American-NATO war in Afghanistan, and a recent University of Maryland poll showed overwhelming support for big cuts in military spending.

The focus on security for the visiting heads of state at the summit meeting are legitimate, and the resulting inconveniences to city residents inevitable. Conjectures about possible violence by demonstrators, however, are overblown.

Our first concern must be the real, not speculative, violence facing the people of Afghanistan in this war. According to the United Nations, last year was the worst year for civilian deaths in Afghanistan, with more than 3,000 killed.

As a former Chicagoan, back in town for various pro-peace NATO events, I agree with Garry McCarthy, the police superintendent, that the city can handle large demonstrations and that the next few days will be “exciting,” as democracy should be.

KEVIN MARTIN
Executive Director, Peace Action
Chicago, May 17, 2012

Should NATO disappear?

Well let’s make it go poof! Join the NATO Counter Summit this Friday and Saturday in Chicago!

Here’s an excellent op-ed by Chicago Area Peace Action’s Michael Lynn and Roxane Assaf in today’s Chicago Tribune.

NATO’s Hard Sell at the Summit

By Michael Lynn

May 16, 2012

In 1949, shortly after the Soviet Union exploded its first nuclear weapon, the United States and 11 WesternEuropean nations formed NATO. The organization’s original goals were the deterrence of Soviet aggression against the war-ravaged nations of Western Europe and containing Soviet influence within the boundaries of its already existing Eastern bloc.

Now, more than six decades later, as the 28-country alliance gathers in Chicago for its summit, the Afghan war and U.S. military spending in general are due for some increased scrutiny. President Barack Obama‘s recently announced joint agreement with Afghan President Hamid Karzai calls into serious question Obama’s intention to withdraw all U.S. combat troops from Afghanistan by 2014 and the administration’s promise to be the most transparent in American history — ironic, since the proposed agreement bypasses Congress entirely.

If there is no accountability to Congress, the will of the American people is being ignored. A recent New York Times poll shows that nearly 7 out of 10 Americans (69 percent) believe the U.S. should not be at war in Afghanistan. Opposition to the war cuts across ideological divides, with 68 percent of Democrats saying the war was going somewhat or very badly and 60 percent of Republicans agreeing. Strikingly, a plurality (40 percent) of Republicans asserted that the U.S. should exit Afghanistan earlier than 2014. A recentChristian Science Monitor poll showed that 63 percent of U.S. respondents rejected the Obama-Karzai deal, while only 33 percent approved.

With such overwhelming public opposition, it is no surprise that 39 peace and justice groups nationwide have formed the Network for a NATO-Free Future and will host a “Counter-Summit for Peace and Economic Justice” prior to the NATO affair.

But activists and street protesters are not the only ones voicing discontent. The unpopularity of the war is shared in other NATO nations, and some governments are listening. Five member states have completed or announced withdrawal plans: Canada in 2011, Poland in 2012, the United Kingdom by 2015, France is set to leave by the end of the year, and Australia is about to announce its own acceleration of troop withdrawal. Yet on NATO’s agenda in Chicago is an attempt to shore up flagging support from allies as well as selling them on the new agreement.

Is there still a need for NATO? With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, NATO’s original raison d’etre disappeared. With Europe rebuilt, the threat from a greatly diminished Russia was no longer credible. The U.S. had emerged from the Cold War as the globe’s only remaining superpower. With the ideological struggle of the Cold War a thing of the past, thoughts turned to a future with less need for expensive military alliances, such as NATO. It was the era when all were wondering how the so-called peace dividend would be spent.

A funny thing happened on the way to that bright and happy future. NATO did not wither away, but grew steadily. It reimagined and re-missioned itself, poised to confront what it termed “complex new risks to Euro-Atlantic peace and stability.” It might not have been clear at the time exactly what those risks were, but the military bureaucracy seemed sure they existed.

Notwithstanding NATO’s intervention in the former Yugoslavia in 1995, its central mission remained vaguely defined until after Sept. 11, when it became a partner-in-arms to then-President George W. Bush‘s “global war on terror.” The terrorist attacks led to the first invocation of Article 5 of the NATO treaty, which states that an attack on any member state will be treated as an attack on all.

Within a month, NATO was involved in the U.S.-led attack on Afghanistan. The attack was defined as an attempt to effect regime change, dismantle al-Qaidaand, in particular, capture or kill Osama bin Laden.

Fast-forward to the present day. Bin Laden is dead. The CIA estimates fewer than 100 al-Qaida members remain in Afghanistan. The Taliban no longer rules that nation. Yet the U.S. and its NATO allies remain embroiled in a stalemated quagmire that is arguably the longest war in U.S. history. The war in Afghanistan has taken the lives of nearly 2,000 U.S. military personnel and untold thousands of Afghan civilians. At the time of this writing, the economic costs totaled a staggering $527 billion.Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has estimated the total long-term costs of the Iraq and Afghan wars at $4 trillion. For perspective, that is roughly 28 percent of U.S. gross domestic product, the total of all economic activity in the country each year.

Details of the U.S.-Afghan Status of Forces Agreement to stay in Afghanistan are supposed to be worked out in the next year, potentially committing tens of thousands of troops and billions of tax dollars through 2024 with little congressional oversight. While President Karzai stressed that the agreement would need to be approved by the Afghan parliament, the White House has maintained that the agreement — despite its authorization of continued military alliance with a sovereign foreign nation — is not a treaty and therefore not in need of ratification by the Senate. One wonders which country is the established democracy.

As Chicago closes schools and imposes draconian cuts on agencies crucial to the city’s most vulnerable, our national leaders will be arguing for increased military spending, which already consumes more than half of the discretionary budget of the U.S. government. It should be a hard sell.

Does anyone truly believe that spending those funds fighting an unwinnable war and killing innocent Afghan civilians in drone attacks is making anyone anywhere more secure? Clearly the American people do not believe so. It’s time for their government to listen to them.

Michael Lynn is a board member of the Chicago chapter of Peace Action, and Roxane Assaf is the outreach coordinator for the group’s Chicago affiliate.

Chicago Office Workers Told to Dress Like the 99% During NATO Summit (Which of Course Most of Them Are!)

It’s tempting to say no comment is necessary about this absurd story in Crain’s Chicago Business that some Loop (downtown Chicago) office workers are being told to dress down and eschew their normal business attire at work during the upcoming NATO Summit to avoid being somehow targeted by protesters. But it’s too delicious an opportunity to waste!

The fear-mongering here is absurd. What in the world is there for Loop office workers to be afraid of? Peaceful folks nonviolently exercising their first amendment rights, representing not only the 99% but the more than 2/3 of the US public wanting an end to the U.S./NATO war in Afghanistan, (and a new poll today shows 63% oppose Obama’s “Twelve More Years!” plan to stay in Afghanistan until 2024)?

Seriously, do the top corporate types, and government and media shills for the interests of the 1%, fear the majority of their own employees (who, in a liberal city like Chicago, are probably mostly in the 99% and the 2/3 wanting to end the Afghanistan war as soon as possible) having minds of their own? Let’s hope at least some Loop employees eschew the fear-mongering and come out and join us — and the “us” will include people from around the country and around the world, and veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars returning their military service medals to NATO — in their suits and ties or with flowers in their hair. We’ll welcome them either way.

A few Peace Action media hits around the Obama visit to Afghanistan and Bin Laden anniversary

Peace Action West’s Political Director Rebecca Griffin’s excellent op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle focused on public opinion and opportunities to end the war while stressing diplomacy, political and economic development support for Afghanistan.

Field Director Judith Le Blanc’s response to the president’s speech from Kabul addressed the cost of the war to both the Afghan and U.S. people (watch for this piece, it could show up in your local paper, as it is being distributed nationally by the Oregon Peace Institute’s op-ed service, and it was also published with a different headline on Counterpunch).

Executive Director Kevin Martin and U.S. Labor Against the War’s Michael Eisenscher called for the troops to come home now, not at the end of 2014 or worse, 2024, in an essay on Common Dreams.

Martin again, on Chicago public radio station WBEZ’s excellent Worldview program yesterday, spoke of the president’s trip in the context of the public’s clear support for ending the war rapidly, upcoming congressional action on Afghanistan, and the NATO Summit in Chicago later this month (my segment is from yesterday, 5.2.12, and begins 16 minutes into the program, lasts about 22 minutes, with two good callers!)

Take Action Now To Bring Our Troops Home From Afghanistan

The President just sneaked in and out of Afghanistan during the cover of night to sign an agreement that could take the U.S. down a path of having 20,000 –  30,000 troops in harms way until 2024.  With the majority of Americans wanting troops home as soon as possible, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) has organized a letter asking the President to announce at the upcoming NATO summit in Chicago a more accelerated transition.  So far she has 47 colleagues signing the letter.  You can see the letter and current signers below.

Additionally, the National Defense Authorization bill should be on the House floor on May 16-18.  A number of allies plan to offer amendments to end the war in Afghanistan sooner.

Please take a moment now and call your Representative at 202-224-3121 and ask them to sign Rep. Lee’s letter to bring the troops home from Afghanistan sooner and vote for any upcoming amendments saying the same thing.  Please comment on this blog and let us know what they said.

The Honorable Barack Obama

President of the United States

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW

Washington, DC  20500

Dear President Obama:

Last week you visited Afghanistan to sign a Strategic Partnership Agreement.  As you stated at Bagram Air Base, “this time of war began in Afghanistan, and this is where it will end.” The core of al Qaeda has been greatly reduced in size and ability to attack Americans. Our brave men and women in uniform have done everything that we have asked of them. With over 17,000 dead and wounded U.S. servicemen and women, and long term costs estimated at $4 trillion for the past decade of unfunded wars, the overwhelming majority of American people want to bring the war in Afghanistan to an expedited end.

While many of us would prefer an immediate full withdrawal from Afghanistan, there is broad, bipartisan consensus in Congress and across America that it is time to accelerate the transition from U.S. to full Afghan control.  We also remind you that any agreement committing U.S. troops to Afghanistan must have congressional approval to be binding.

Therefore, at the upcoming NATO summit in Chicago, we ask that you announce an accelerated transition of security responsibility to the Afghan government and security forces and the expedited withdrawal of our troops from Afghanistan as quickly as these can be safely and responsibly accomplished.

Sincerely,

Current Co-Signers (49): Adam Smith, Baldwin, Bass, Capps, Chu, Yvette Clarke, Clay, Cohen, Conyers, Costello, John Duncan, Edwards, Ellison, Farr, Filner, Frank, Grijalva, Hahn, Alcee Hastings, Heinrich, Hinchey, Holt, Honda, Jackson Jr., Tim Johnson, Kucinich, Lewis, Lofgren, Maloney, McCollum, McGovern, Michaud, George Miller, Moore, Nadler, Olver, Pingree, Polis, Rangel, Richardson, Loretta Sanchez, Serrano, Slaughter, Stark, Mike Thompson, Tonko, Frederica Wilson, Woolsey, Yarmuth.

Responding to the State of the Union

by Peter Deccy, Peace Action

President Obama’s third State of the Union message began and ended in homily honoring our men and women in uniform.  The President referred to them as the one institution that actually worked like it should.  Mission focused, trusting one another, working as a team.

He encouraged our government to be just like them.  We’ll see…

If you were watching the address on the CSPAN website, you could see Members of Congress furiously tweeting their thoughts which then appeared below the screen.  Many of them apparently didn’t hear the clarion call for togetherness, instead engaging in accusations of class warfare and decrying higher taxes for the rich as soon as the President’s words on those topics left his lips.

The President made a great case for the rich paying its fair share, a call for fundamental fairness in taxation.  He called for investment in energy independence and job creation as expected, but still, welcome words to the progressive wing of his party.

He was passionate.  He was confident. In response, Governor Daniels provided an uninspired regurgitation of the standard Republican line, very Herbert Hoover, circa 1928. Very 1%.

Peace advocates however, should be concerned.  The President seemed to be capping Pentagon cuts at $500 billion, far below what is possible, leaving spending at intolerable and unsustainable levels. It’s just as he described in his speech; “somebody else has to make up the difference— like a senior on a fixed income; or a student trying to get through school; or a family trying to make ends meet.”

He basically promised Iran he would order a military strike on their alleged nuclear facilities if he became convinced they were about to build their first nuclear bomb.  He made no reference to abolishing nuclear weapons, his claim to Nobel fame, his Prague pledge.

Afghanistan? The President recommitted himself to withdrawing the remaining surge troops this summer, but then spoke of an “enduring partnership” to prevent the return of al-Qaida. With some 65,000 troops left in Afghanistan after the summer drawdown, the President may well be signaling a long and costly US military presence. Given the levels of corruption in Afghanistan’s government, which really controls very little of the country, the grinding poverty and an insurgency that is unlikely to disappear as long as foreign troops remain, very long and very costly.

A Veterans Job Corps sounded good, but he really didn’t have enough to say about our returning veterans either.  Will they, each and everyone, receive the medical care they need, and everything else the recruiter promised them.

In the end, the President returned to honoring the dedication and professionalism of our military. He used the raid on bin Laden as his touchstone.  This is how all America should confront its challenges; working together, focused on the mission at hand.  How could Republicans possibly resist working with the President for the sake of America.

Nicely done, but the tweets told me don’t get my hopes up.

Tomorrow, we will honor the other 1%: our service members and veterans.

Less than 1% of the nation serves in our Armed Forces, and like many of you mentioned in your comments on the Iraq War, we are deeply gratified that many of them are returning home this winter. However, it has not escaped our attention that for many, this is not a homecoming, but rather a redeployment to Kuwait, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.

At Peace Action, we will continue to work hard until each and every service member comes home.

Amidst unemployment, a 12-18 month backlog at the VA, and a rising suicide epidemic, returning veterans are marching with the 99%. Source: Veterans News Now.

But what are they coming home to?

Crisis of employment: With a record high average number of deployments under their belts, our veterans are returning home to face a higher rate of unemployment than their civilian counterparts.

Crisis of care: An alarming suicide epidemic is pervading the military, with active-duty memberstaking their own lives at the rate of one every 36 hours. After a decade of continuous war, PTSD rates are as high as 50% among deployed troops. Despite this alarming epidemic, the average new claim processing time at the VA appears to be an astounding 12 to 18 months!

Meanwhile, both the House and Senate Veterans Committees are willing to cut funding to Veterans Affairs.

Peace Action says: Move the Money!

By cutting wasteful Pentagon spending, we could save billions of dollars from our federal budget. Billions of dollars that could be used for critical human needs, such as care for our returning veterans.

Your generous contribution to Peace Action will help build the movement to Move the Money from wars and weapons to human needs. Honor our troops this Veterans Day by helping build a more peaceful and just world.

Voters Disappointed with Obama Afghanistan Drawdown

Washington, DC — June 22, 2011 — President Obama’s announcement this evening of a limited troop withdrawal from Afghanistan — America’s longest war — is bound to disappoint Members of Congress and an electorate tired of the conflict.

 

As has been reported, senior White House officials confirmed that the President plans to remove 10,000 troops by the end of this year and another 23,000 troops by September 2012.

 

“Removing a few brigades this year, then several more next year, still leaves more than double the U.S. troops in Afghanistan than when President Obama took office.  There’s no military solution in Afghanistan.  It’s time to bring all troops and contractors home and focus on the political solution, which is the only way this costly war will end,” observed Paul Kawika Martin, the political and policy director of Peace Action — a group founded in 1957 and the largest grassroots peace organization in the U.S.

 

The pace of troop drawdown is significantly smaller than asked for by some in Congress.  Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), chair of the Arms Services Committee, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) wanted 15,000, 30,000, and 50,000 out this year, respectfully.  Today, Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) the minority chair of the Sen. Foreign Relations committee said the withdrawal was inadequate.

 

The President’s numbers for this year represent a small percentage of the 100,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan and over 100,000 additional contractors.

 

Both chambers of Congress on a bipartisan basis have pushed for a sizable number of troops to leave.

 

Last week, a bipartisan group of 27 U.S. Senators — led by Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Mike Lee (R-UT) and Tom Udall (D-NM) — sent a letter to President Obama asking for a “sizable and sustained reduction of U.S. military forces in Afghanistan, beginning in July 2011.”  A half dozen more Senators made similar statements individually.

 

Last month, the House sent a clear signal to President for an accelerated withdrawal by narrowly failing to pass an amendment offered by Reps. Jim McGovern (D-MA), Walter Jones (D-NC) and others to the 2011 National Defense Authorization Act.  204 Representatives voted aye, including a record 26 Republicans.

 

Congress has been feeling voter pressure on the war.  A pew poll released yesterday showed a strong majority of Americans support bringing troops home “as soon as possible.”  Peace Action organized twenty-five national organizations, representing over 30 million voters, to sign onto a letter echoing this sentiment by asking for a “sizable and sustained” withdrawal.

 

With the high costs of $10 Billion a month for the war, lawmakers on Capitol Hill and locally are questioning whether the costs are making the U.S. safer.  The U.S. Conference of Mayors just approved a resolution calling for a speedy end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and redirection of scarce dollars for “urgent domestic needs.”

 

The war has become more deadly to U.S. troops, which has weighed heavy on lawmakers.  Over 1,600 U.S. troops have been killed in the nearly ten-year long war.  This year has surpassed 2009 as the deadliest year of the conflict, killing 57 percent more American service members.  Tens of thousands more have been wounded physically and mentally.  An unknown number, but estimated to be in the tens of thousands, of Afghan civilians have perished, and the United Nations reported that so far, 2011 is the worst year for civilians deaths.

 

Republican Presidential candidates like Mitt Romney, Jon Huntsman and Ron Paul are also calling for a quicker end to the war.

 

Peace Action calls for all troops and contractors out of Afghanistan within one year with resources focused on political reconciliation and Afghan-led aid and development.

 

“In November 2012, voters will want to see less than 67,000 troops and even more contractors still in Afghanistan.  The President will need to speed up his plans and announce more troops coming home to please the electorate,” concluded Martin.

 

The President announced his first surge of 20,000 troops in spring 2009. Then started sending another 33,000 in December of that year nearly tripling the number of troops on the ground when he took office.

 

###

 

Founded in 1957, Peace Action (formerly SANE/Freeze), the United States’ largest peace and disarmament organization, with over 100,000 paid members and nearly 100 chapters in 36 states, works to abolish nuclear weapons, promote government spending priorities that support human needs, encourage real security through international cooperation and human rights and support nonmilitary solutions to the conflicts with Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq. The public may learn more and take action at http://www.Peace-Action.org. For more up-to-date peace insider information, follow Peace Action’s political director on Twitter. http://twitter.com/PaulKawika

 

If you wish to unsubscribe from further emails from Peace Action, please write pmartin@peace-action.org with UNSUBSCRIBE in the subject line.

 

Editors Notes:

 

1.  The Pew poll can be found here:

 

http://people-press.org/2011/06/21/record-number-favors-removing-u-s-troops-from-afghanistan/

 

2.  The Letter to President signed by 27 Senators:

 

June 15, 2011

 

The President

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW

Washington, DC 20500

 

Dear Mr. President:

 

We write to express our strong support for a shift in strategy and the beginning of a sizable and sustained reduction of U.S. military forces in Afghanistan, beginning in July 2011.

 

In 2001 the United States rightfully and successfully intervened in Afghanistan with the goals of destroying al Qaeda’s safe haven, removing the Taliban government that sheltered al Qaeda, and pursuing those who planned the September 11 attacks on the United States. Those original goals have been largely met and today, as CIA Director Leon Panetta noted last June, “I think at most, we’re looking at maybe 50 to 100, maybe less” al Qaeda members remaining in Afghanistan.

 

In addition, over the past few years, U.S. forces have killed or captured dozens of significant al Qaeda leaders. Then, on May 2, 2011, American Special Forces acting under your direction located and killed Osama bin Laden. The death of the founder of al Qaeda is a major blow that further weakens the terrorist organization.

 

From the initial authorization of military force through your most recent State of the Union speech, combating al Qaeda has always been the rationale for our military presence in Afghanistan. Given our successes, it is the right moment to initiate a sizable and sustained reduction in forces, with the goal of steadily redeploying all regular combat troops.

 

There are those who argue that rather than reduce our forces, we should maintain a significant number of troops in order to support a lengthy counter-insurgency and nation building effort. This is misguided. We will never be able to secure and police every town and village in Afghanistan. Nor will we be able to build Afghanistan from the ground up into a Western-style democracy.

 

Endemic corruption in Afghanistan diverts resources intended to build roads, schools, and clinics, and some of these funds end up in the hands of the insurgents. Appointments of provincial and local officials on the basis of personal alliances and graft leads to deep mistrust by the Afghan population. While it is a laudable objective to attempt to build new civic institutions in Afghanistan, this goal does not justify the loss of American lives or the investment of hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars.

 

Instead of continuing to be embroiled in ancient local and regional conflicts in Afghanistan, we must accelerate the transfer of responsibility for Afghanistan’s development to the Afghan people and their government. We should maintain our capacity to eliminate any new terrorist threats, continue to train the Afghan National Security Forces, and maintain our diplomatic and humanitarian efforts. However, these objectives do not require the presence of over 100,000 American troops engaged in intensive combat operations.

 

Mr. President, according to our own intelligence officials, al Qaeda no longer has a large presence in Afghanistan, and, as the strike against bin Laden demonstrated, we have the capacity to confront our terrorist enemies with a dramatically smaller footprint. The costs of prolonging the war far outweigh the benefits. It is time for the United States to shift course in Afghanistan.

 

We urge you to follow through on the pledge you made to the American people to begin the redeployment of U.S. forces from Afghanistan this summer, and to do so in a manner that is sizable and sustained, and includes combat troops as well as logistical and support forces.

 

We look forward to working with you to pursue a strategy in Afghanistan that makes our nation stronger and more secure.

 

Sincerely,

 

Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR)

Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT)

Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM)

Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT)

Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO)

Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM)

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA)

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH)

Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA)

Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD)

Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND)

Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL)

Sen. Al Franken (D-MN)

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY)

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA)

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN)

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA)

Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ)

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT)

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ)

Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA)

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY)

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)

Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-NY)

Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI)

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR)

 

3.  A letter from 25 organizations representing over 30 million voters urging Senators to sign Merkely-Lee-Udall letter:

 

We, the undersigned 25 organizations representing over 30 million voters, strongly urge Senator Feinstein to join 27 other Senators and sign this bipartisan letter to President Obama urging a “sizeable and sustained” reduction in forces from Afghanistan beginning in July.

 

While many of us are calling for a more accelerated transition and may not agree with every word of the letter, it represents a step in the right direction. It is clearly time to begin the process terminating the United States military engagement from the war in Afghanistan.

 

Please let Paul Kawika of Peace Action know how you plan to act on this important issue at pmartin@peace-action.org or 951-217-7285.

 

Sincerely,

 

Matthew Hoh

Director

Afghanistan Study Group

 

Karen Showalter

Executive Director

Americans for Informed Democracy

 

Robert Borosage and Roger Hickey

Co-Directors

Campaign for America’s Future

 

William C. Goodfellow

Executive Director

Center for International Policy

 

Don Kraus

Chief Executive Officer

Citizens for Global Solutions

 

John Isaacs

Executive Director

Council for a Livable World

 

Michael Kieschnick

President

CREDO Action

 

Robert Naiman

Policy Director

Just Foreign Policy

 

Justin Ruben

Executive Director

MoveOn.org Political Action

 

Jenefer Ellingston

Delegate

National Green Party

 

Simone Campbell

Executive Director

NETWORK, A National Catholic Social Justice Lobby

 

Terry O’Neill

President

National Organization for Women

 

Jo Comerford

Executive Director

National Priorities Project

 

Dave Robinson

Executive Director

Pax Christi USA

 

Paul Kawika Martin

Policy and Political Director

Peace Action

 

Peter Wilk, MD

Executive Director

Physicians for Social Responsibility

 

Jean Stokan

Director

Sisters of Mercy of the Americas — Institute Justice Team

 

Mark C. Johnson, Ph.D.

Executive Director

The Fellowship of Reconciliation

 

James E. Winkler, General Secretary

General Board of Church and Society

The United Methodist Church

 

Lisa Schirch, PhD

Director

3D Security Initiative

 

Marylia Kelley

Executive Director

Tri-Valley CAREs

 

Jeff Blum

Executive Director

USAction

 

Michael Eisenscher

National Coordinator

U.S. Labor Against the War (USLAW)

 

Stephen Miles

Coalition Coordinator

Win Without War

 

Susan Shaer

Executive Director

Women’s Action for New Directions

 

Thanks for calling your Senators to sign the Merkley-Lee-Udall letter to the President to bring troops home from Afghanistan

Thanks for calling your Senators to sign the Merkley-Lee-Udall letter to the President to bring troops home from Afghanistan.  A significant 27 Senators signed.

While Peace Action wants to see all troops and contractors out of Afghanistan with a year and we don’t agree with every word of this bipartisan Senate letter, the main message is politically important:  urging President Obama for a “sizeable and sustained” reduction in forces from Afghanistan beginning in July.

Peace Action worked hard with others to get the 27 Senators.

The letter was sent Tuesday, June 14th.

Below you’ll find:

1.  The text of the Senate letter with 27 signers

2.  A letter from 25 organizations representing over 30 million voters urging Senators to sign.

3.  A letter from military officials supporting the letter

_______________________________________________

1.  The text of the Senate letter that currently has 27 signers

June X, 2011

The President

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW

Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President:

We write to express our strong support for a shift in strategy and the beginning of a sizable and sustained reduction of U.S. military forces in Afghanistan, beginning in July 2011.

In 2001 the United States rightfully and successfully intervened in Afghanistan with the goals of destroying al Qaeda’s safe haven, removing the Taliban government that sheltered al Qaeda, and pursuing those who planned the September 11 attacks on the United States. Those original goals have been largely met and today, as CIA Director Leon Panetta noted last June, “I think at most, we’re looking at maybe 50 to 100, maybe less” al Qaeda members remaining in Afghanistan.

In addition, over the past few years, U.S. forces have killed or captured dozens of significant al Qaeda leaders. Then, on May 2, 2011, American Special Forces acting under your direction located and killed Osama bin Laden. The death of the founder of al Qaeda is a major blow that further weakens the terrorist organization.

From the initial authorization of military force through your most recent State of the Union speech, combating al Qaeda has always been the rationale for our military presence in Afghanistan. Given our successes, it is the right moment to initiate a sizable and sustained reduction in forces, with the goal of steadily withdrawing all regular combat troops.

There are those who argue that rather than reduce our forces, we should maintain a significant number of troops in order to support a lengthy counter-insurgency and nation building effort. This is misguided. We will never be able to secure and police every town and village in Afghanistan. Nor will we be able to build Afghanistan from the ground up into a Western-style democracy.

Endemic corruption in Afghanistan diverts resources intended to build roads, schools, and clinics, and some of these funds end up in the hands of the insurgents. Appointments of provincial and local officials on the basis of personal alliances and graft leads to deep mistrust by the Afghan population. While it is a laudable objective to attempt to build new civic institutions in Afghanistan, this goal does not justify the loss of American lives or the investment of hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars.

Instead of continuing to be embroiled in ancient local and regional conflicts in Afghanistan, we must accelerate the transfer of responsibility for Afghanistan’s development to the Afghan people and their government. We should maintain our capacity to eliminate any new terrorist threats, continue to train the Afghan National Security Forces, and maintain our diplomatic and humanitarian efforts. However, these objectives do not require the presence of over 100,000 American troops engaged in intensive combat operations.

Mr. President, according to our own intelligence officials, al Qaeda no longer has a large presence in Afghanistan, and, as the strike against bin Laden demonstrated, we have the capacity to confront our terrorist enemies with a dramatically smaller footprint. The costs of prolonging the war far outweigh the benefits. It is time for the United States to shift course in Afghanistan.

We urge you to follow through on the pledge you made to the American people to begin the redeployment of U.S. forces from Afghanistan this summer, and to do so in a manner that is sizable and sustained, and includes combat troops as well as logistical and support forces.

We look forward to working with you to pursue a strategy in Afghanistan that makes our nation stronger and more secure.

Sincerely,

 

Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR)

Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT)

Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM)

Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT)

Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO)

Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM)

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA)

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH)

Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA)

Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD)

Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND)

Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL)

Sen. Al Franken (D-MN)

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY)

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA)

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN)

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA)

Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ)

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT)

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ)

Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA)

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY)

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)

Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-NY)

Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI)

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR)

_______________________________________________

2.  A letter from 25 organizations representing over 30 million voters urging Senators to sign:

Dear Senate Staff Person,

We, the undersigned 25 organizations representing over 30 million voters, strongly urge Senator XXXXX  to join 27 other Senators and sign this bipartisan letter to President Obama urging a “sizeable and sustained” reduction in forces from Afghanistan beginning in July.

While many of us are calling for a more accelerated transition and may not agree with every word of the letter, it represents a step in the right direction.

It is clearly time to begin the process terminating the United States military engagement from the war in Afghanistan.

Sincerely,

Matthew Hoh

Director

Afghanistan Study Group

Karen Showalter

Executive Director

Americans for Informed Democracy

Robert Borosage and Roger Hickey

Co-Directors

Campaign for America’s Future

William C. Goodfellow

Executive Director

Center for International Policy

Don Kraus

Chief Executive Officer

Citizens for Global Solutions

John Isaacs

Executive Director

Council for a Livable World

Michael Kieschnick

President

CREDO Action

Robert Naiman

Policy Director

Just Foreign Policy

Justin Ruben

Executive Director

MoveOn.org Political Action

Jenefer Ellingston

Delegate

National Green Party

Simone Campbell

Executive Director

NETWORK, A National Catholic Social Justice Lobby

Terry O’Neill

President

National Organization for Women

Jo Comerford

Executive Director

National Priorities Project

Dave Robinson

Executive Director

Pax Christi USA

Paul Kawika Martin

Policy and Political Director

Peace Action

Peter Wilk, MD

Executive Director

Physicians for Social Responsibility

Jean Stokan

Director

Sisters of Mercy of the Americas — Institute Justice Team

Mark C. Johnson, Ph.D.

Executive Director

The Fellowship of Reconciliation

James E. Winkler, General Secretary

General Board of Church and Society

The United Methodist Church

Lisa Schirch, PhD

Director

3D Security Initiative

Marylia Kelley

Executive Director

Tri-Valley CAREs

Jeff Blum

Executive Director

USAction

Michael Eisenscher

National Coordinator

U.S. Labor Against the War (USLAW)

Stephen Miles

Coalition Coordinator

Win Without War

Susan Shaer

Executive Director

Women’s Action for New Directions

_______________________________________________

3.  A letter from Military officials supporting the letter:

June 2, 2011

The President

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW

Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President:

As former military officers and defense officials, we endorse the Senate letter to the Administration to order a “sizeable and sustained” reduction in troop levels in Afghanistan, beginning in July 2011.

We agree that the United States has successfully deployed its military and intelligence assets to accomplish our stated mission of destroying al Qaeda’s training camps in Afghanistan and degrading the leadership by killing or capturing dozens of significant al Qaeda leaders, culminating in the operation that eliminated Osama bin Laden.

Furthermore, we do not believe it is a top national security interest of our country to utilize our military forces to undertake nation-building activities in an internal Afghan conflict that stretches back to the 1970s.

We congratulate you on the successes achieved by our forces, and urge you to begin a substantial and responsible redeployment of our forces this summer.

Sincerely,

Evelyn Foote, Brig Gen., U.S. Army (Ret.)

Robert G. Gard, Jr., Lt. Gen., U.S. Army (Ret.)

Sam Gardiner, Colonel, USAF (Ret.)

Matthew Hoh, U. S. Marine Corps (Iraq), State Department Officer, (Afghanistan)

John H. Johns, Brig. Gen., U.S. Army (Ret.)

Lawrence J. Korb, former Assistant Secretary of Defense and Captain, U.S. Navy Reserves (Ret.)

Karen Kwiatkowski, Lt. Col., USAF (Ret.)

Paul R. Pillar, Former U.S. Intelligence Officer

James M. Thompson, Lt. Gen., U.S. Army (Ret.)

Colonel Lawrence B. Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, U.S. Army (Ret.)

Ann Wright, Colonel, U.S. Army Reserves