Response to Obama's Surge in Afghanistan passed by the National Action Committee, December 3, 2009 www.socialistparty-usa.org On December 1st, President Obama has announced that he will send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. The justification is paper thin. Far from creating security, the occupation itself has created a state of lawlessness in Afghanistan. The fraud ridden reelection of the puppet Karzai regime has put popularity for the US mission in Afghanistan through the floor, and further inflamed anger in the middle east. Far from building Afghan sovereignty, Obama's policy is to deepen support for an illegitimate regime with tight associations with oil companies, drug lords, and warlords. Americans are waking up to the fact that, like the occupation of Iraq, this occupation isn't making us any safer, nor is it bringing evelopment, democracy, security, or women's rights to Afghanistan. Rather, it is killing Afghan civilians and U.S./ NATO troops while stealing badly needed funds from housing, jobs, healthcare, and climate protection. Even before the election, Obama refused to counter McCain's assertion that the surge in Iraq had worked. Instead he said US policy should turn toward Afghanistan. One year into his administration and we are on course to double the number of troops in Afghanistan from Bush Administration levels. The anti-war movement is slowly and painfully learning several important lessons. First, that these occupations do not represent the mistaken policies of a peace-loving government, but rather are due to a global system emanating from Washington that can only be addressed in their entirety. And second, the Democratic Party will not move one inch toward a less belligerent policy. These wars are about seizing natural resources, expanding unregulated markets, and dominating the middle east militarily, politically, and economically, vis a vis our competitors in Europe and Asia. These motivations are not unique to one country or region of the world; nor were they unique to the Bush administration. Rather, these factors characterize a decades old global US imperial project. Rather than enjoying a much sought after “peace dividend” after the Cold War, US military spending and curtailments on civil liberties continued unabated. From this understanding we can see how deeply radical a true peace movement must be. An antiwar stance ought to be a point of unity among a variety of movements, from climate change to health care; workers rights to civil rights. This broad unity must be matched by a firm commitment to uncompromising struggle. We can expect that every angle of non-violent force must be fully leveraged in order to impose such radical changes on how the US ruling establishment conducts business. Lastly, we should recognize that some elements of the establishment may be split away from supporting direct military confrontation in favor of “smarter” more efficient levers of domination. The withdrawal of troops from any theater of conflict would signal a major victory in terms of lives saved and the morale of peoples' struggles everywhere. But the peace movement must go further to address military spending and the power of those who own the war industry, or else we can expect the unending threats and interventions around the world to continue. We must not tolerate occupations like that suffered in Palestine, which is underwritten with US sponsorship. While we make the immediate demand of “troops home now from Iraq and Afghanistan,” we must also lay the foundation for a movement that can dismantle US militarism and demand real alternatives. As this new phase of imperial expansion unfolds under the leadership of the Obama administration, the Socialist Party USA stands ready to struggle for an antiwar movement that respects the right to self-determination of the Afghan people; a movement that is democratic and inclusive; a movement that involves the participation of broad sectors of society; and finally, a movement that is truly independent of the partisan interests of the Democratic Party and the capitalists they represent.
