Afghan youth: "We want you out"

The following open letter, from Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers (left) and Afghans for Peace, was sent to us by Kathy Kelley of Voices for Creative Nonviolence. Below the letter is a video from Afghans for Peace.

To all the leaders of our world, the leaders of the US-led coalition, the Afghan government, the ‘Taliban/Al-Qaeda’ and regional countries:

We are intolerably angry.

All our senses are hurting.

Our women, our men and yes shame on you, our children are grieving.

Your Afghan civilian-military strategy is a murderous stench we smell, see, hear and breathe.

President Obama, and all the elite players and people of the world, why?

America’s 250-million-dollar annual communications budget just to scream propaganda on this war of perceptions, with its nauseating rhetoric mimicked by Osama and other warlords, is powerless before the silent wailing of every anaemic mother.

We will no longer be passive prey to your disrespectful systems of oligarchic, plutocratic war against the people.

Your systems feed the rich and powerful. They are glaringly un-equal, they do not listen, do not think and worst, they do not care.

We choose not to gluttonize with you. We choose not to be trained by you. We choose not to be pawned by you.

We henceforth refuse every weapon you kill us with, every dollar you bait us with and every lie you manipulate us with.

We are not beasts.

We are Afghans, Americans, Europeans, Asians and global citizens.

Yes, you have the false, self-appointed power to arrest us over expressing the public opinion of ordinary folk, students, farmers, shepherds, labourers, teachers, doctors….., people who now have nowhere to turn and nowhere to hide. ( Open Letter to our World Leaders)

This world public opinion against the Afghan war has been clearly expressed and is larger than any number of Wikileaks you seek to suppress. So, come arrest us all as we civilly disobey you. Come arrest us all.

Yes, you have the army, police and apparatchik to smother us and to bribe those who are Pavlov-reflexed to money, but you cannot stop us from restoring our voice.

We refuse to prostitute our hearts and minds.

We refuse you.

Not you the human person, but you the greedy system of self-interested power.

Again and again here in Afghanistan, we have seen a hope for non-violence light up; every day we see a yearning for humane relationships, and because of this, love is how we now firmly take our stand.

We will listen to the People on December 19th, on the Global Day of Listening to Afghans and we invite every one of you to pick up your phone to call us, to share one another’s pain, and to call our world to urgent reconciliation. We invite the world public opinion to overwhelm us!

We wish to invite all the people of the world because when the powers are not listening to the people, listening becomes an act of love, it becomes a solidarity of non-violent resistance.

How can we do any less?

14-year-old Abdulai’s father was killed by the ‘Taliban’ and so, like every other human being, he copes with sorrow, hate, fear and anger.

But, he wakes up to the chronic war days in his land sensing that ‘something is very wrong with the world I’m caught up in’, ‘these elders of the world are not getting it…..’.

How does trillion-deficit killing, followed by the strategy of escalated killing and yet another review for more killing, work?

How does it make anyone safer?

How does it solve the incorruptible corruption, unequalled inequality and inviolate violence we face daily?

Your policies, skewed-ly ‘diagnosed’ and ‘reviewed’ in a cold clinical manner divorced from reality, have been deaf to the concerns and needs of the people, thus we endeavour to have a People’s Afghanistan December Review, because that’s what ordinary people can do.

We would try not to ‘throw’ our shoes at you. We would try to recognize the better side of all human beings and thus continue to serve our commoner’s tea and bread to one and all. But we do ask, plead and demand that you stop your unsustainable, superpower militarism.

We want peace.

We want you out.

With singular sincerity,

Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers and Afghans for Peace

Below is a video from Afghans for Peace:

Kathy Kelly: Hunger and Anger in Afghanistan

The Obama administration has announced the imminent release of a December Review which will evaluate the U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan. The military has yet to disclose what the specific categories for evaluation will be. Yet many people in Afghanistan might wish that hunger along with their anger over attacks against civilians could top the list.

In Afghanistan, a nation where 850 children die every day, about a quarter of the population goes hungry. The UN says that 7.4 million Afghans live with hunger and fear of starvation, while millions more rely on food help, and one in five children die before the age of five.

“Do you think we like to live this way?” an Afghan man asked me, last October, as he led us toward a primitive tent encampment on the outskirts of Kabul. “Do you see how we live? The cold and the rain are coming. How will we protect our children?” He flicked his forefinger on a weather-beaten blanket covering a tent. The blanket immediately ripped.

Standing next to him was a man who quietly handed me three crumpled photos, never lifting his eyes from the ground. The spokesperson identified the man as his cousin. The first picture showed his cousin’s ruined home. A U.S. aerial bombardment had destroyed the dwelling. The next pictures were of two bloodied children. “All of his children were killed,” the spokesperson said. “All his family, his wife, his five children, by an attack from the air.” He went on to explain that they had been goat herders in the San Gin province of Afghanistan. They were happy with their lives, selling yoghurt and fattening their animals. A Taliban fighter had come to their village at night. The U.S. apparently wanted to kill this fighter, but instead they destroyed his cousin’s family. “We couldn’t stay there,” the spokesperson said, pointing to a picture of the debris that was once his cousin’s home. “We were afraid we might be hit again, so all of us left. We are four families.”

Inside one of the tents, a young mother welcomed me to sit down on the only available cushion. It appeared that they slept on the ground. The families share one pot over a fire pit, and a few utensils. They also have access to a water pump. Near their area is a tent where they join for prayers, and also one that is used for classes. One man begged us to tell the authorities that they have no medicines in the camp and that many of the children are ill.

Days earlier, in far more comfortable setting, students at the Bamiyan University, located in the central, mountainous province of Bamiyan, had prodded us to comprehend their anger. In a straw poll, several dozen were unanimous in stating that they want the U.S. to leave their country. Several insisted that most U.S. people don’t understand or care about the impact of U.S. warfare in Afghanistan. An engineering student held up a copy of the Time Magazine cover which showed a young Afghan woman whose nose was horribly mutilated, allegedly as punishment for defying men in her family. Time Magazine’s accompanying headline announced that the story would explain why U.S. troops must remain in Afghanistan. “Do Americans care more about noses than fingers?” the student asked. “Who will cover the stories about fingers that are cut off?!” I felt embarrassed not to know what he was talking about. Several weeks later, I read a New York Times article about a trial taking place at an army base in Washington State. The article shed light on the student’s question. A U.S. Staff Sergeant from the 5th Stryker Combat Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division was charged with leading a conspiracy to randomly target and kill unarmed Afghan civilians. He and four other soldiers faced murder charges. The staff sergeant is alleged to have planted evidence to cover up the murders and to have carved fingers off corpses which he kept as war souvenirs.

Although the U.S. military forbids soldiers to mutilate corpses and go on killing sprees that target civilians, the U.S. occupying forces in Afghanistan have bragged, in recent weeks, about increased capacities to kill with ever more invulnerable weapons. A company of 16 Abrams tanks was recently delivered to Afghanistan. “We’ve taken the gloves off,” said an unnamed U.S. military official, “and it has had huge impact.” The 68 ton tanks fire high-explosive, white phosphorus and anti-personnel shells that can destroy a house a mile away. Each tank costs $4.3 million and uses 3 gallons of jet fuel per mile.

The Pentagon is also sending 12,500 XM25 Individual Air Burst Weapons to Afghanistan, oneto each infantry squad and Special Forces team in Afghanistan. The XM25 gun can fire a projectile that will travel the length of eight football fields. “When fired, the projectile is designed to explode directly above a target,” says the Army Times, “raining shrapnel down on an enemy crouched behind cover.”

In a report to the November 2010 NATO conference held in Lisbon, 29 aid groups working in Afghanistan warned that the increases in air attacks, the use of night raids, and the destruction of civilian property contributes to “rapidly deteriorating” security for most Afghans and a rise in civilian casualties. People who flee from U.S. attacks face food insecurity, loss of income, lack of health care, and homelessness. The aid groups’ report is entitled “Nowhere to Turn.” Increasingly, Afghans living in war zones have nowhere to hide.

Commenting on impoverishment and displacement caused by military offensives, a Pakistani op-ed recently compared hunger and anger to two live wires. When the wires touch, they create an incandescent and uncontrollable flash.

It’s hard to imagine the extent of explosive popular rage that would result if the shoe were on the other foot, if U.S. people were subject to aerial bombing, night raids, destruction of civilian homes, displacement and starvation.. In reality, the live wires of hunger and anger could exist in our lives too; we could be angry, very angry, about this war, angry enough to make it a political issue. But if our hunger were for an end to the war, if our hunger even signaled a desire to rethink and repent our murderous policies, if we honestly sought forgiveness from Afghan civilians who’ve borne the brunt of our war of choice, then perhapsan uncontrollable and incandescent flash of fairness and peace could govern our future.

Kathy Kelly (Kathy@vcnv.org) co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence (www.vcnv.org) From December 11 – January 2, she will be part of a Voices delegation in Afghanistan, meeting with the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers. To join them in a 12/19/2010 global skype call, write to youthpeacevolunteers@gmail.com gmail

Steve Burns: Why wasn't the war a factor in the election?

"I have no hope, energy or optimism that we will ever be heard. I no longer stand vigil against war. Neither war was even an issue in the election."

The above quote is from a message sent to us by one stalwart peace activist explaining why her local peace group is disbanding. At a recent Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice Board meeting where this quote was read, many of those present expressed a similar sense of frustration about the lack of attention paid by the public, the media and by the candidates to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And how can you not be outraged and frustrated when construction of a Muslim community center in lower Manhattan draws more attention than wars that have claimed the lives of thousands of Americans, killed as many as a million Iraqi and Afghan citizens and squandered trillions of dollars that could have been better used at home?

But outrage and frustration alone don't cause peace groups to disband. For that to happen, we have go farther, to the belief that the American people are not capable of caring about deaths that occur in a war thousands of miles away, even when those dying are our own soldiers, or that the peace movement is so ineffective and incapable of forcing its issue on to the national agenda that "we will never be heard."

I won't take that extra step. I don't think the lack of attention to Afghanistan and Iraq in the mid-term elections reflects public indifference or peace movement ineffectiveness. And, to make my case, I don't have to reach very far -- just back to 2008, when the war was very much an issue in the election.

His early opposition to the Iraq war pushed Barack Obama, a relatively unknown one-term Senator, past Hillary Clinton -- who voted to authorize the Iraq invasion -- in the contest for the Democratic nomination. Iraq was a factor again in Obama's victory over war-supporter John McCain.

What changed between 2008 and 2010? First of all, let's remember that it was opposition to one particular war -- the war in Iraq -- that forced war on to the election agenda in 2008. By 2008, the peace movement has spent five solid years making the case against the Iraq war and occupation, with relatively little attention given to Afghanistan, which took on the name "the forgotten war." That steady work culminated in a level of opposition to the Iraq war that approached 70%, making the Iraq war the most unpopular in our nation's history.

But while we were all headed to the polls in November of 2008, negotiations between the Bush administration and the Iraqi government were underway on a withdrawal agreement that would require a complete withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Iraq by the end of 2011. The agreement, signed in December of 2008, now forms the basis for troop withdrawals from Iraq that the Obama administration is now undertaking.

The Iraq withdrawal agreement is a major accomplishment for the Iraqi people, who successfully frustrated and defeated the most powerful military force on the planet and its plans for permanent military bases from which to dominate the Middle East. But it also had the effect of removing the Iraq war as a political issue within the United States. And because the basis for peace-movement growth during the Bush years was opposition to the Iraq war, and not the Afghanistan war or war in general, troop withdrawals from Iraq were bound to mean a loss of interest in the peace movement.

All of this was well understood at the time, and starting in early 2009, as the Obama administration began to couple withdrawals from Iraq with an escalation in Afghanistan, the peace movement turned its attention to Afghanistan. And turn it did, to the point where Iraq now seems to have inherited the title of "forgotten war" from its older (by thirteen months) brother.

But, while organizations and movements can change their focus relatively quickly, public opinion is another matter. While opposition to the Iraq war remains at the 70% level (despite the best efforts by General Petraeus and his supporters to spin the war as a success) opposition to the Afghanistan occupation has only recently broken the 50% mark.

In short, we find ourselves in a period where the most unpopular war is ending and the war that's continuing is not so unpopular -- a state of affairs that doesn't place the peace movement front and center in the public consciousness.

Events in Afghanistan, combined with the peace movement's new focus on that war, are now taking their toll on support for the Afghanistan war. The well-respected Quinnipiac University poll describes its latest poll results this way: "Support For War In Afghanistan Collapses." Here, "collapse" means a two-month change from 49% support for the war and 41% opposition in September to 44% support and 50% opposition in November -- a fourteen point swing in the antiwar direction.

That's a hopeful sign for those of us who want to the U.S. military to leave Afghanistan, but it's also an indicator of how far we have to go. The bias towards war among media and political elites in this country is so strong that 50% opposition to war -- or even 60% opposition -- doesn't buy you anything. Push opposition to the 70% level, however, and you'll start to see cracks in the bipartisan military-industrial-complex coalition that fuels our wars. In 2008, the split was expressed in the form of the Obama candidacy. A future split could express itself not only within the Democratic Party, but within the Republican party as well, given the increase in Tea Party candidates expressing isolationist views.

But why should it be the case, nearly ten years into the Afghanistan occupation, that we've only recently crossed the threshold into majority opposition? Here, we need to remember that Afghanistan is not Iraq, the war the peace movement chose to focus on, in part because it was the easier war to argue against. The Afghanistan war still enjoys some base of support within the U.S., for example, among political liberals who are concerned about the consequences for Afghan women if the U.S. military withdraws. There are good arguments against this point of view, but they need time to be made and to sink into the public consciousness.

We shouldn't doubt the peace movement's ability to "be heard" and move public opinion in an anti-war direction. The shift from 70% support at the beginning of the Iraq war to 70% opposition less than three years later is one of the most remarkable feats of public persuasion in our nation's history, vastly exceeding anything the Tea Party has ever accomplished or even attempted, and all the more remarkable given the near-total media blackout under which it was accomplished.

Nor should we doubt the American people's willingness to make war an issue, once they've made up their minds about a war. The war-makers understand very well that they don't need public support to continue the war, only public confusion. For now, they operate under a temporary reprieve, relying on moral confusion about a supposed "good war" in Afghanistan. But the confusion will be cleared away, and support for the Afghanistan war will trend in only one direction: down.

In conclusion, public interest in war and peace issues is at a low ebb right now partly as a consequence of peace-movement success in helping to end the war that drew the greatest public opposition. All successful social movements experience similar moments of let-down at the partial accomplishment of their goals. If we can take a moment to step back and recognize our partial success, we can fight off the depression and frustration that prevents us from replicating that success: first with Afghanistan, and then by using the Iraq and Afghanistan experience to build a permanent antiwar majority.

Steve Burns is Program Director of Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice.

David Smith-Ferri: What Laila Sees

Kabul, Afghanistan – “We live in constant fear of suicide attacks,” said Laila, an Afghan woman who lives in Kandahar city and who visited with us yesterday. “When will the next one strike and where?”

“Twelve days ago,” she continued, “a good friend was walking home from the mosque. A four-minute walk. An IED was detonated, and my friend lost half his face. Another man lost his leg, and his son lost his leg, too. We live with that kind of uncertainty, when you don’t know what is going to happen from one moment to the next.”

Laila’s descriptions of living with fear and violence in Kandahar contradict the mild U.S. descriptions of the “security situation” there. “The Taliban do not control the city,” said Army General Stanley McChrystal, in a May 13, 2010 briefing concerning a “much-anticipated” military operation in Kandahar. “You can walk around the streets of Kandahar, and there is business going on. It is a functioning city.”

Compare McChrystal’s blithe comments with Laila’s experience. “In Kandahar city, you don’t know what’s going to happen, minute to minute. Every single minute that we live – if you can call it living – every single second there is the thought that this is going to be my last second.”

Laila went on to illustrate this graphically. “A good friend of mine had a ticket to travel to Canada to visit her mom for a family wedding. She dressed in a burqa, and went to say goodbye to some colleagues. When she returned home, traveling by rickshaw, she saw a neighbor outside. So she stood for two minutes to talk to her. In those two minutes, two men on a motorcycle drove up. One man shot her in the head and killed her, and the other man drove them away.”

Laila states that this style of killing – where two men ride a motorcycle and one is responsible for driving, the other for shooting – has become common in Kandahar. “At least 300 – 500 people have been killed in front of their homes, offices, shopping areas. The guys who killed my friend are still roaming around the city. No effort was made to find and question them.”

In late September, after months of “careful and quiet preparation” in Kandahar Province, U.S./NATO forces officially launched what they are calling “Operation Dragon Strike,” currently their largest military operation in the country.

The New York Times reported that winning over Kandahar is crucial to shifting the balance of power in Afghanistan, and Brigadier General Joseph Blotz with the ISAF in Kabul called it the “most significant military operation” in the country. Last week, an AP news report from a journalist embedded in another province declared that “the Kandahar operation has so far produced stunning results.” And on November 6, an NPR correspondent confidently stated his expectation that General Petraeus will declare the Kandahar operation a “big success” when he reports to President Obama prior to the December “review” of U.S. military efforts in Afghanistan.

But Laila and her friends and colleagues haven’t seen any ‘stunning results’ or ‘big success.’

“Now we hear bombardment every night, but no communication about it. Is it really Talibs who are being killed or ordinary citizens? Women? Children?”

Laila, who operates a business in Kandahar, used to travel back and forth everyday from her rented home to her office. “It’s only a three-minute ride,” but because even that is too risky, “I’ve moved into my office.”

In Kandahar, in August and September, the Mirwais Hospital received nearly 1,000 patients wounded by war. These were record high numbers and double the figures from a year before (International Committee for the Red Cross).

Some people have considered the management of “Operation Dragon Strike” a failure because in response to advance publicity many insurgents left the area ahead of time, and international forces have met with so little resistance. For people in Kandahar, however, this hasn’t meant a reprieve. While there has been less combat on the front lines, U.S. Special Forces are conducting frequent night raids in the area, breaking into homes, terrorizing families, violating people’s sense of privacy and honor, and generating deep anger and resentment. Further, there are assassinations every day related to politics, business disputes, and the practices of vigilante justice, all of which frightens people and reminds them of the terrible period of civil war between 1992 and 1994.

In addition to undiminished violence, people in Kandahar live with the sour taste and gnawing frustration of unfulfilled promises of development made by the U.S. and the international community. Residents in much of Kandahar, we are told by NGO representatives, have electricity only every third day. Development organizations made a huge investment in hydroelectric turbines for the Kajaki dam only to walk away and leave the project unfinished because insecurity has made the challenge of bringing in materials so daunting and death threats have driven subcontractors to abandon their efforts – six years of work with as yet nothing to show for it. Failed projects cause more than disappointment. Factories in a U.S.-funded industrial park in Kandahar city sit empty for lack of electricity, the employment possibilities they hold yet another undelivered promise. Local people see clearly that development organizations and their staff profit, while leaving little behind. This, too, builds resentment.

In Kandahar, home to the airfield from which U.S. drones operating in Afghanistan are launched, local Afghans refer to the pilotless warplanes as “computer tayarri,” or computer planes. The drones fly overhead daily, but they don’t see what Laila sees.

David Smith-Ferri, Kathy Kelly, and Jerica Arents are Co-Coordinators of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, traveling in Afghanistan.

David Smith Ferri: Bamiyan Diaries, Day 1

Bamiyan Province in Afghanistan, a stunningly beautiful mountainous region, is located in the center of the country, roughly 100 miles from Kabul. Most people here live in small, autonomous villages tucked into high mountain valleys, and work dawn to dusk just to scratch out a meager living as subsistence farmers, shepherds, or goatherds. The central government in Kabul and the regional government in Bamiyan City exercise little or no control over their lives. They govern themselves, and live for the most part in isolation.

Given this, who would imagine that Afghan youth from small villages across Bamiyan Province would come together to form a tight-knit, resilient, and effective group of peace activists, with a growing network of contacts and support that includes youth in other parts of the country and peace activists in the U.S. and in Palestine? I certainly wouldn’t have. In the United States, we may find it hard to believe that anything good can actually come out of Afghanistan, or we may have fallen into a trap of thinking that Afghans cannot accomplish anything useful without foreign aid and assistance. I confess that I struggle to live outside the shadow of this narrow-mindedness and ethno-centrism. Certainly, if the scope of our imaginations is limited by CNN and Fox News, we would not be likely to imagine an indigenous peace group forming in Bamiyan Province. But this is exactly what has happened.

Calling themselves the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers (AYPV), they range in age from eight to twenty, and they have been active for over two years, translating their camaraderie and the horror of their families’ experience of war and displacement into a passionate and active pacifism. At an invitation from AYPV, three American peace activists from Voices for Creative Nonviolence have arrived in Bamiyan for five days to build bridges of friendship and support with these youth and their families. Over this time, we will write a daily diary of our experiences and interactions with the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers.

Meeting the AYPV
We arrived in Bamiyan in bright sunshine after a 40-minute United Nations flight from Kabul on a 1960s-era, Russian helicopter, with messages (“no smoking”) and identifications (“main rotor shaft”) in Russian and English. Stiff and slightly sickened by the jarring flight and the diesel and jet fuel exhaust, we disembarked from the helicopter and stepped into the Bamiyan Valley, the bright autumn sunshine, and the equally bright faces and smiles of the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers, all of whom were lined up and waiting for us eagerly. There was no question about our carrying our own luggage, which the Afghan youth whisked away politely but firmly. Fifteen-year old Abdulai, a small-boned and lean but very sturdy Hazara boy from a potato-farming family, hefted my very heavy suitcase over his back like, well, like a sack of potatoes! He dismissed my objections good-naturedly with a smile and said to me with what seemed a mixture of pride and matter-of-factness, “It’s OK. I am a mountain boy.” There is an Afghan saying, “The first time we meet, we are friends. The second time, brothers (sisters).” We were certainly greeted in this spirit today.

In a country occupied by a foreign power, bleeding from military, political, and ethnic violence, worn by decades of war and corruption, the AYPV are looking for meaningful ways to raise a voice of nonviolence. Because there is so much suspicion and strife among the major ethnic groups in Afghanistan – Pashtun (44%), Hazara (18%), Tajik (25%), and Uzbeck (7%) – the group has sought ethnic diversity, both as a symbol of the need for reconciliation and to teach themselves tolerance. At present, there are only Hazara and Tajik people in the group, largely because the population of Bamiyan Province is almost exclusively Hazara and Tajik. And there are no girls or young women in the group.

To address this, the group developed a relationship with a staff person at an orphanage in Kabul where many Pashtun children live, and earlier this year several AYPV members visited the orphanage. The trip to Kabul (by road), which requires passing through areas controlled by Pashtun people, was itself a courageous act, as was the act of showing up at the orphanage with their message of nonviolence. Their courage was rewarded. Seeds were planted among Pashtun youth at the orphanage, and a follow-up visit is planned.

Over dinner this evening, after we introduced ourselves, we talked about prejudice and the intolerance that is such an obstacle to peace in Afghanistan. Mohammad “Jan” (a term of endearment), a soft-spoken, strikingly handsome Tajik and at twenty the oldest member of the group, began the discussion by saying, “War is increasing prejudice and divisions in Afghan society, because much of the fighting is happening along ethnic lines.” The conversation became personal, as some of the boys discussed their own struggle with prejudice. “I was prejudiced against Pashtuns and Tajiks when I joined the group, but these prejudices are now gone,” Abdulai says. Ali, a fourteen year old Hazara boy, concurs: “ I was prejudiced against Tajiks. Now Mohammad Jan and Faiz (another Tajik member of the group) are like my brothers. There is still a great deal of prejudice in the general community. The solution is to make friends.” Zekirullah, a stocky 11 year old Hazara boy, commented: “I had great prejudice against Tajiks and Pashtuns, because it is so widespread among Hazaras. Sometimes I still feel this prejudice.”

Over the time the group has been together, there have been cutting remarks, especially against Mohammad Jan and Faiz, the two Tajiks. Because Tajiks are Sunni, Hazaras (who are Shia) may see them as ‘infidels.’ “Often we refuse to see each other as human beings,” Mohammad Jan said. “Instead, we see Tajik, Pashtun, Hazara, Shia . . . I think we have to have a long-term viewpoint. And young people are the key. Old people are like full grown trees which can’t bend. But young people are like saplings. They can change their direction.”

Kathy Kelly, Jerica Arents, and David Smith-Ferri are Co-Coordinators of Voices for Creative Nonviolence (www.vcnv.org). They are currently traveling in Afghanistan.

Jerica Arents: Drones on Trial: Narrowing the Gap Between Law and Justice

Jerica Arents (center) with other students at a 2009 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on a "Truth Commission" to investigate the Bush administration's national security policies.

I received an education yesterday.

I wasn’t in a classroom. I wasn’t laboring over a paper, strategizing in a small group, poring over a textbook or hustling across campus. I was sitting as a spectator in the front row of Judge Jansen’s courtroom in Clark County, Nevada.

Fourteen peace activists were on trial for trying to hand-deliver a letter to the base commander at Creech Air Force Base in April of 2009. Their letter laid out concerns about usage of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, or drones, for surveillance and combat purposes in Afghanistan. The Creech 14 believe that the usage of remote aerial vehicles to hunt down and kill people in other lands amounts to targeted assassination and is prohibited by international and U.S. law. Soldiers carrying M16s stopped them after they had walked past the guardhouse at the base entrance and a few hours later Nevada state troopers handcuffed the Creech 14 and took them into custody.

The next day, they were charged with trespass to a military facility and released. The charges were later dropped, then reinstated. Defendants, upon learning of a September 14, 2010 court date, had ten months to plan for their trial. They decided to represent themselves pro se and to call, as expert witnesses, former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, Colonel Ann Wright and Professor Bill Quigley, the Legal Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights. What were the chances that a Las Vegas court that normally handles traffic violations and minor offenses would admit three expert witnesses to testify on behalf of defendants charged with a simple trespass? Slim to zero in the view of most observers.

In an opening statement, Kathy Kelly summarized what defendants would prove regarding their obligations under international law and their exercise of rights protected by the U.S. constitution. The judge told her, quite firmly, that any testimony unrelated to the charge of trespass would be disallowed.

Yet, much to our surprise, Judge Jansen decided that all three expert witnesses would be allowed to testify. Rev, Steve Kelly, SJ rose and called on former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark as his first witness.

After Clark was sworn in, he slowly sat down and scanned the room.

About fifty supporters filled the court. The defendants were seated in the jury box. To me, they represented a choir of my finest teachers. Steve Kelly remained standing, and then, with great care, questioned Ramsey Clark, first to establish his credibility as a witness and then to elicit his testimony regarding the issue of trespass. Steve asked Ramsey Clark about his history as a deputy attorney general during the civil rights era. Ramsey Clark spoke of lunch-counter sit-ins with his soft-spoken charm, emphasizing how important it was for people to violate the “No Trespass” rules that forbade blacks and whites to drink coffee together. Later, he relied on the age-old necessity defense to advocate on behalf of people who protested indiscriminate killing in Viet Nam. Bringing us up to date, Ramsey asked a question. ”When indiscriminate killing is occurring, are you just supposed to stand by the gate [of Creech Air Force Base] and hide your face?”

Despite Judge Jansen’s insistence that the defense could only discuss matters related to a misdemeanor trespass charge, each of the expert witnesses were able to knit together the Nuremburg principles, international law, and the justification of necessity to establish not only the right but sometimes the duty of people to engage in acts that violate trespass laws. Ann Wright spoke about how isolated military members were from public opinion and of how likely it was that, if informed they would respond to any great debate taking place in the public forum.

Bill Quigley, the last defense witness to take the stand, testified that when he taught law students about trespass statutes, he always raised with them the possibility of a necessity defense. Helping demonstrate “the space between law and justice,” he held his hands in front of him, about a foot apart. ”I encourage my students to work, every day, to narrow the gap between law and justice,” said Bill Quigley. “I ask them to adopt a ‘Hundred Year Vision,’ and remember that 100 years ago, Jim Crow laws were permitted, domestic violence was allowed, and discrimination against women, and the disabled were all considered legal acts.

The prosecution clearly hoped to discredit all three expert witnesses. “And do you know any of the defendants?” barked the prosecutor when cross-examining Ramsey Clark. “Of course”, answered Ramsey Clark, maintaining eye contact with the prosecutor. “I love them.”

Following the prosecutor’s cross-examination of Bill Quigley, Judge Jansen asked him several questions, the last of which pertained to Quigley’s advice to law students who might contemplate crossing a line for idealistic reasons. “Now if some of your students informed you of their intention to cross onto an Air Force Base clearly marked with a No Trespass sign,” Judge Jansen wondered, “What would you say to them?”

“I would tell them to weigh the consequences carefully”, answered Bill Quigley, noting that their convictions would come at a steep price.

With the possible exception of the prosecution, all assembled seemed in agreement that they had witnessed an extraordinarily rich education about our collective duties to uphold basic human rights. But, so far, the word “drone” had been mentioned only in the opening statement. Brian Terrell rose to deliver a closing statement. Brian referred to a metaphor already employed by two of our witnesses, that of a baby trapped inside a house on fire. “We fourteen are people who saw the smoke,” said Brian, “We’ve seen the babies dying in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and no trespass sign can keep us from trying to reach the children.”

Judge Jansen then addressed all of us. He said that he had just celebrated his 25th anniversary as a judge, but in all those years every trespass case that came before him was settled with a plea. This was the first time that defendants took a trespass case to trial. Given that this was his first time trying such a case and considering the many important issues raised, Judge Jansen stated that he would need time to study the issues and write his decision. He said he’d need at least three months and then invited the defendants to quickly examine their calendars and propose a date for their next court appearance. All agreed to return on January 27th 2011.

It’s one thing for me to announce that I’ve received an exceptional education over the course of an unusual day. It’s quite another for a U.S. judge who has been on the bench for 25 years to voice appreciation for what he has learned from defendants and witnesses, and then promise his continued attentiveness to the issues that were raised.

His delayed decision gained him entry into the choir of teachers. “Go in peace,” he said, as he left the courtroom.

Jerica Arents (jerica@vcnv.org) completed her M.A. in Social Justice at Loyola University at Chicago in 2010. She co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence and lives with the White Rose Catholic Worker community.

Kathy Kelly: Banning slaughter

In the early 1970’s, I spent two summers slinging pork loins in a Chicago meat-packing factory. Rose Packing Company paid a handful of college students $2.25 an hour to process pork. Donning combat boots, yellow rubber aprons, goggles, hairnets and floor length white smocks that didn’t stay white very long, we’d arrive on the factory floor. Surrounded by deafening machinery, we’d step over small pools of blood and waste, adjusting ourselves to the rancid odors, as we headed to our posts. I’d step onto a milk crate in front of a huge bin full of thawing pork loins. Then, swinging a big, steel T-hook, I’d stab a large pork loin, pull it out of the pile, and plop it on a conveyor belt carrying meat into the pickle juice machine. Sometimes a roar from a foreman would indicate a switch to processing Canadian pork butts, which involved swiftly shoving metal chips behind rectangular cuts of meat. On occasion, I’d be assigned to a machine that squirted meat waste meat into a plastic tubing, part of the process for making hot dogs. I soon became a vegetarian.


But, up until some months ago, if anyone had ever said to me, “Kathy Kelly, you slaughtered animals,” I’m sure I would have denied it, and maybe even felt a bit indignant. Recently, I realized that in fact I did participate in animal slaughter. It’s similar, isn’t it, to widely held perceptions here in the United States about our responsibility for killing people in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, in Iraq and other areas where the U.S. routinely kills civilians.


The actual killing seems distant, almost unnoticeable, and we grow so accustomed to our remote roles that we hardly notice the rising antagonism caused by U.S. aerial attacks, using remotely piloted drones. The drones fire missiles and drop bombs that incinerate people in the targeted area, many of them civilians whose only “crime” is to be living with their family.


Villagers in Afghanistan and Pakistan have little voice in the court of U.S. public opinion and no voice whatsoever in U.S. courts of law. Aiming to raise concern over U.S. usage of drones for targeted killings, 14 of us have been preparing for a trial here in Las Vegas, where we are charged under Nevada state law with having trespassed at Creech Air Force Base, in nearby Indian Springs, Nevada.


The charges stem from an April, 2009 action when several dozen people held vigils at the main gate to Creech AFB for ten days. One of our banners said, “Ground the Drones, Lest Ye Reap the Whirlwind.” Franciscan priest Jerry Zawada’s sign said: “The drones don’t hear the groans of the people on the ground, --and neither do we.” Jerry carried that sign onto the base on April 9, 2009 when 14 of us attempted to deliver several letters to the base commander, Colonel Chambliss. Nevada state authorities charged us with trespass. We believed that international law, which clearly prohibits targeted assassinations, obliged us to prevent drone strikes. “It is incumbent on pilots, whether remote or not, to ensure that a commander’s assessment of the legality of a proposed strike is borne out by visual confirmation,” writes Philip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, “and that the target is in fact lawful, and that the requirements of necessity, proportionality, and discrimination are met.”


The United States isn’t at war with Pakistan. U.S. leaders repeatedly stress that Pakistan is our ally. Nevertheless, U.S. operated drones are used for targeted killing in North and South Waziristan. “Targeted killing is the most coercive tactic employed in the war on terrorism,” according to the Harvard Journal. “Unlike detention or interrogation, it is not designed to capture the terrorist, monitor his or her actions, or extract information; simply put, it is designed to eliminate the terrorist.”


The Pentagon claims that the drone attacks are an ideal strategy for eliminating Al Qaeda members. Yet in the name of bolstering security for U.S. people, the U.S. is institutionalizing assassination as a valid policy. Does this make us safer?


General Petraeus may perceive short-term gains, but in the long run it’s likely that the drone attacks, as well as the night raids and death squad tactics, will cause blowback. What’s more, drone proliferation among many countries will lessen security for people in the U.S. and throughout the world.


With the usage of drones, the U.S. populace can experience even greater distance and less accountability because U.S. armed forces and CIA agents, invisible to the U.S. populace, can assassinate targets without ever leaving a U.S. base. Corporations that manufacture the drones and technicians who design them celebrate cutting edge technology and rising profits.

Recalling my own involvement in slaughter, I’m ashamed that I took the job for no other reason than to earn a few dimes more, per hour, than I might have gotten at a job which didn’t involve killing. It took me four decades to realistically assess what I’d done. Will it take 40 years for us humans to acknowledge our role in slaughtering other human beings who have meant us no harm?

In a Las Vegas courtroom, on September 14, 2010, the judge who hears our case has an unusual opportunity to help accelerate that process by allowing expert witnesses to speak about citizen obligations under international law and our protected rights under the constitution of the U.S., all in relation to our duty to abolish drone warfare.

Kathy Kelly (kathy@vcnv.org) co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence (www.vcnv.org) Her book, Other Lands Have Dreams, is available through Counterpunch.

Kathy Kelly: The Indefensible Drones: A Ground Zero Reflection

Libby and Jerica are in the front seat of the Prius, and Mary and I are in back. We just left Oklahoma, we're heading into Shamrock, Texas, and tomorrow we'll be Indian Springs, Nevada, home of Creech Air Force Base. We've been discussing our legal defense.

The state of Nevada has charged Libby and me, along with twelve others, with criminal trespass onto the base. On April 9, 2009, after a ten-day vigil outside the air force base, we entered it with a letter we wanted to circulate among the base personnel, describing our opposition to a massive targeted assassination program. Our trial date is set for September 14.

Creech is one of several homes of the U.S. military's aerial drone program. U.S. Air Force personnel there pilot surveillance and combat drones, unmanned aerial vehicles with which they are instructed to carry out extrajudicial killings in Afghanistan and Iraq. The different kinds of drone include the "Predator" and the "Reaper." The Obama administration favors a combination of drone attacks and Joint Special Operations raids to pursue its stated goal of eliminating whatever Al Qaeda presence exists in these countries. As the U.S. accelerates this campaign, we hear from UN special rapporteur for extrajudicial executions, Philip Alston, who suggests that U.S. citizens may be asleep at the wheel, oblivious to clear violations of international law which we have real obligations to prevent (or at the very least discuss). Many citizens are now focused on the anniversary of September 11^th and the controversy over whether an Islamic Center should be built near Ground Zero. Corporate media does little to help ordinary U.S. people understand that the drones which hover over potential targets in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen create small “ground zeroes" in multiple locales on an everyday basis.

Libby, at the wheel, is telling Jerica about her visit to Kabul, in 1970. "I worked for Pan Am," said Libby, "and that meant being able to stay for free at the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul. After landing in Pakistan, we hired a driver to take us across the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan. All along the highway we saw herds of camel traveling along a parallel old road. I wonder if the camel market in Kabul is still there?"

Jerica says she'll look for it. She and I have been hard at work to obtain visas and arrange flights for an October trip to Pakistan and Afghanistan. [Libby is exceptional in that she hasn't tried to talk Jerica out of the dangerous travel.]

Conversation switches to whatever CD has just come on, and I tune out, wondering if I've done my share of issuing warnings to Jerica about traveling in a war zone.

Tinny music and rural Texan countryside blend together.

My thoughts drift to the Emergency Surgical Center for Victims of War, in Kabul. A little over two months ago, Josh and I met Nur Said, age 11, in the hospital's ward for young boys injured by various explosions. Most of the boys welcomed a diversion from the ward's tedium, and they were especially eager to sit outside, in the hospital garden, where they'd form a circle and talk together for hours. Nur Said stayed indoors. Too miserable to talk, he'd merely nod at us, his hazel eyes welling up with tears. Weeks earlier, he had been part of a hardy band of youngsters that helped bolster their family incomes by searching for scrap metal and unearthing land mines on a mountainside in Afghanistan. Finding an unexploded land mine was a eureka for the children because, once opened, the valuable brass parts could be extracted and sold. Nur had a land mine in hand when it suddenly exploded, ripping four fingers off his right hand and blinding him in his left eye.

On a sad continuum of misfortune, Nur and his companions fared better than another group of youngsters scavenging for scrap metal in the Kunar Province on August 26^th.

Following an alleged Taliban attack on a nearby police station, NATO forces flew overhead to "engage" the militants. If the engagement includes bombing the area under scrutiny, it would be more apt to say that NATO aimed to puree the militants. But in this case, the bombers mistook the children for militants and killed six of them, aged 6 to 12. Local police said there were no Taliban at the site during the attack, only children.

General Petraeus assures his superiors that the U.S. is effectively using drone surveillance, sensors and other robotic means of gaining intelligence to assure that they are hunting down the right targets for assassination. But survivors of these attacks insist that civilians are at risk. In Afghanistan, thirty high schools have shut down because the parents say that their children are distracted by the drones flying overhead and that it's unsafe for them to gather in the schools.

I think of Nur, trapped in his misery, at the Emergency surgical center. He'll be one among many thousands of amputees whose lives are forever altered by the war and poverty that afflict his country. Many of these survivors are likely to feel intense hatred toward their persecutors. 300 villagers in the Sayed Abad district of Wardak province took to the streets in protest on August 12, following an alleged U.S. night raid. "They murdered three students and detained five others," one of the protesters said. "All of them were civilians." Villagers, shocked by the killing, shouted that they didn't want Americans in Afghanistan. According to village eyewitnesses, American troops stormed into a family home and shot three brothers, all young men, and then took their father into custody. One of the young men was a student who had returned to the family home to celebrate the traditional “iftar” fast at the beginning of Ramadan. Local policemen are investigating the allegations, and NATO recently conceded that they may have killed some civilians. (see www.vcnv.org Afghanistan Atrocities update).

The drones feed hourly intelligence information to U.S. war commanders, but the machinery can't inform people about the spiraling anger as the U.S. conducts assassination operations in countries throughout the 1.3 billion-strong Muslim world. "Sold as defending Americans," writes Fred Branfman, "(it) is actually endangering us all. Those responsible for it, primarily General Petraeus, are recklessly seeking short-term tactical advantage while making an enormous long-term strategic error that could lead to countless American deaths in the years and decades to come."

The Prius is comfortable, but my side of the backseat has become a makeshift office. The most important file contains Bill Quigley's comprehensive argumentation as to why the court should allow us to present a necessity defense based on international law. Bill is the Legal Director for the Center for Constitutional Rights. On September 14, we want to call on him as an expert witness. We and our codefendants have chosen to mount a pro se defense to try to persuade our judge that far from committing a crime we have exercised our rights and our duties, under international and U.S. law, to try to prevent one and to raise public opposition to usage of drones in "targeted" assassinations.

Jerica hands me the questions we can use to elicit Bill's testimony. We try to word our questions so that the evidence will be admissible in court. "Could Bill please inform the court about citizen's responsibilities under international law, could he explain to the court what articles and statutes we will be invoking?" To a layperson, it seems like an elaborate game of "Mother May-I," and we haven't even started developing questions to ask Col. Ann Wright, the former U.S. diplomat, who had helped re-open the U.S. Embassy in Kabul shortly before resigning her job in a refusal to cooperate with buildup toward the May 2003 U.S. Shock and Awe invasion of Iraq.

Rounding out our trio of expert witnesses is former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark. We hope his personal experience within the U.S. government might arouse the court's more careful attention to the seldom-discussed legal issues that are fundamentally at stake here. However, the judge has already indicated that his calendar only allots one day for our trial.

Libby, Jerica, Mary and I have blocked out at least ten days, inclusive of travel, for our small contribution to an ongoing effort of people around the world working to put drones on trial. We're in New Mexico now. I feel cramped and restless, and I wonder if Tucumcari, where we plan to stop for lunch, has internet. We can't possibly bring the testimony of Afghans and Pakistanis to court this Tuesday. Their testimony, borne on bodies scarred and mutilated and harbored in memories of nightmare, will never be given away and cannot be given in court. Extrajudicial killings are killings without rule of law, without trial. Few if any Afghan or Pakistani civilian survivors of U.S. wars will ever travel to a U.S. court of law for consideration of their grievances.

And at this moment I realize that if we were four Afghans or Pakistanis or Iraqis traveling in a war zone, we'd have spent this entire trip watching not the Southwestern landscape, but the skies.

Kathy Kelly (kathy@vcnv.org) co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence (www.vcnv.org) Her book, Other Lands Have Dreams, is available through Counterpunch.

Kristen Petroshius: Finding inspiration in Arizona

Kristen Petrosius (center) at a civil resistance action in Arizona

Last week I had the honor of being one of the hundred arrested for doing civil disobedience in Phoenix, Arizona. By blocking the road in front of Arpaio’s jail and office and flooding his jail with over eighty people on July 29, we kept his forces too busy to be able to do the raids on Brown communities that Arpaio had been bragging about for months. Physically, with our bodies, we prevented Arpaio’s assault on our communities for one day.

People had told me before my visit that Arizona is a police state. Nothing could have prepared me for the gross oppression I witnessed and heard in people’s stories during my brief three-day visit. We know that all over the country it’s criminal to “drive while Black/Brown”. Usually the police at least have to make up an excuse for harassing you. In Arizona, though, the police just say, “you look suspicious” meaning “you are brown.” I did not find one Brown person in Arizona who didn’t have a story of being on their way to work or to get their kids when they were stopped, arrested, and forced to endure a day in Arpaio’s hell-hole of a jail – deprived of sleep and food, treated like dirt by the guards, and mentally broken by the psychological warfare of the entire system’s design – only to be released with no charges. People’s freedom is literally being taken away every day in Arizona, especially if you’re an immigrant and you’re Brown, but even if you’re Native, Asian, Black, Arab, or a poor white person.

I feel a fierce rage in my belly when I think of Arizona and then I think: Do I feel the same rage with 287g, the so-called “secure communities” law that allows local police to act as ICE agents; the ways the ICE are constantly deporting our neighbors, friends, and families; the hardship immigrants have in finding work, accessing healthcare and other social services, and traveling? Do I feel the same rage from the ways Black people, Indigenous people, and other communities of color are inflicted with poverty, violence, and prisons? Am I willing to put my body on the line for these “every day” struggles? Is it the time to use civil disobedience as a more common tactic in our movements? Why or why not?

I think to a generation before me and the decisions we were making then. Recently I read of another white person from Wisconsin, James Zwerg, who decided to participate in the Freedom Rides through Alabama in 1961. One Freedom Ride had already taken place and they faced brutally violent mobs and a bus that was set on fire. Being clear in their message that your violence cannot keep us from building our movement, the Freedom Riders decided to take a second shot at a ride knowing they may be killed. The night before he left for the Freedom Rides, James Zwerg wrote a letter to his parents apologizing that he had to give his life for the cause, but hoped one day they could understand. James was viciously attacked the next day and, though nearly killed, survived. In making a choice to stand for justice that day, James was taking a risk that was literally about life and death. Countless others, especially Black people and Brown people, gave their lives for the cause. Let us remember them.

What are the risks we take (or don’t take) in these days and times? When my mom found out about my arrest, she immediately worried I would lose my job and my whole life would come to an end. How much we have internalized fear, how much we believe that making the system shake just a little bit would have such harsh repercussions that life as we know it would end. My partner, who is Black, said afterward how much she wanted to go with me and take arrest, but she feared they would beat her or do other especially horrible things to her in jail as a Black lesbian. Another friend said her grandfather taught her that whatever you do, as a Black person, don’t let the police arrest you and get you on track to be another pawn in their prison industrial complex. These fears and the white supremacy within the system are real. Yet at the same time, we know that sometimes it’s necessary to take direct action even with the fear and the risks.

How do we reconcile all this within ourselves? How do we hold the fact that people of color will always be hit harder than whites from taking direct action and that we all will have to deal with some consequences, and also know that the work must be done by somebody? If not us, who? If not now, when? After all, for many of us we’re risking a short stint in jail, a blemish on our criminal records, and we continue on in life. I think to our ancestors in the struggle who gave their lives for us: Give us the strength to make the necessary decisions of our times. As a friend of mine, Max Rameau, says: We owe it to history and to our ancestors to forward the cause.

Many of the women I was arrested with endured great pains to do direct action. Most were mothers; one woman was pregnant. One mujer valiente, Asuscena, is the super momma of 6 children – one still a small baby. As we sat in our cell she could feel the pain of her baby not being able to breastfeed and kept hoping someone would hold him for her. Yet she still acted. A strong older Black woman, Audrey, took arrest and endured a day of solitary (which is psychological trauma) because of her disability. She said she knew she had to take a stand for immigrant rights because otherwise she’d be like white people who say they want to do something but aren’t willing to take action when it comes down to it. She said it was especially important for her as a woman of color to be present with her body and that, even knowing the trauma that would be especially targeted at her, she would do it all over again in a heartbeat. Audrey took action.

As I feel that nervousness, that self-doubt, that voice that says, “Oh, someone else will do it,” I remember these courageous Freedom Fighters and the 27 hours we spent behind bars and become grounded once again. If Audrey can do it, if Asuscena can do it, I can do it. I am incredibly grateful we’re not yet at a crossroads of choosing to risk our lives for our movement, at least not yet. As I think of all the people we left behind in jail – the Black man with hair awry who has clearly been psychologically tortured, the white woman beat up by the sheriff’s forces leaving a hallway full of blood, the migrants being bashed by ICE and set up for deportation, and all the women trying to sleep away their endless despair of being controlled by other inhumane beings – I ask within myself: What am I willing to do, what am I willing to give so that all this needless suffering and oppression stop? These are the questions of our times.

Kristen Petroshius is a member of WNPJ member group Groundwork anti-racist collective in Madison.

Steve Burns: Time magazine's concern for Afghan women

You won't see the picture on the left, of a victim of a U.S. airstrike in Afghanistan, on the cover of Time magazine. It's not that Time is reluctant to show horrific images on its cover -- just last week their cover photo was of a young Afghan woman named Aisha, horribly mutilated by her husband under the direction of a Taliban commander -- rather, it's that the cover of Time is reserved for horrific photos of the victims of our official enemies, the Taliban, and never for horrific photos of our own victims.

But highlighting Time's obvious double-standard isn't really an adequate response to the challenge of Time's cover photo and its provocative headline, "What happens if the U.S. leaves Afghanistan" (please note that that's not a question, but an assertion: This is what happens if the U.S. leaves Afghanistan.) You can call Time's pairing of photo and headline propaganda, and it is, but it's effective propaganda because it touches on a serious and sincere concern that many Americans have about withdrawal: "Yes, what will happen if the U.S. leaves Afghanistan?" If most Americans, unlike Time, still place a question mark at the end of that sentence, then those of us who advocate for withdrawal have an obligation to at least attempt to respond to their question.

By far the most thoughtful response I've seen to Time's cover and the accompanying report is by Derrick Crowe of the Rethink Afghanistan project, here. I encourage you to go and read the whole thing. What I've written below is partly (and unashamedly) stolen from Derrick's writing, with some of my own thoughts added in.

We must start, as Derrick does, by noting that Aisha's attackers acted last year - at a time when a hundred thousand U.S. troops and more than a hundred thousand U.S.-paid military contractors occupied her country. U.S. helicopters controlled the skies, U.S. drones targeted people at will, American soldiers kicked down doors in a thousand homes, and none of this prevented Aisha's husband from taking a knife to her face. Time's cover could just as well be entitled "What happens if the U.S. stays in Afghanistan," because eight years of our occupation did nothing to stop the horrible crime that cover photo depicts. Does anyone seriously think another eight years, or another eighteen years, of occupation will prevent more attacks of the sort that mutilated Aisha?

In fact, Time's framing of the question is based on a simple, and wrong, understanding of the situation in Afghanistan. In this cartoon-simple view, there are "bad" Afghans, the Taliban and Al Qaeda, who horribly oppress and mutilate women, and there are "good" Afghans, presumably the Afghan government that we are spending tens of billions of dollars a month to support, who oppose the oppression of women. In fact, at the highest levels of the U.S.-supported Karzai government, the same brutal warlords responsible for the oppression and killing and disfigurement of women in the days before the Taliban came to power (No, the Taliban did not invent the oppression of women in Afghanistan) now hold power, and are now reinstating the same misogynist laws that were on the books in the days of the Taliban. When the Afghan parliament passed a law sanctioning marital rape and child marriage, it was signed into law by President Karzai, the man we have sacrificed thousands of American and Afghan lives to keep in office. To quote from a message typed by a panicked American soldier at Outpost Keating, an isolated American base camp under heavy insurgent attack, "The enemy is inside the wire." For the women of Afghanistan, there is simply no dividing line - no "wire" - between their oppressors in an insurgency we oppose and their oppressors within a government we support.

In Afghanistan, a woman-hating form of fundamentalist Islam holds great power, and is reflected in many parts of society - in the insurgency, yes, but also in the government. Is military occupation an effective challenge to dangerous and even evil ideas? No. In fact, members of the Afghan women's-rights organization, Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan have repeatedly explained that the presence of a foreign occupying army in their country acts to strengthen the most misogynistic elements of their society, first by giving legitimacy to religious fundamentalists who use Islam as a basis for their fight against occupation, and second by creating a climate of constant war, in which violence is the only means by which disputes are settled and power asserted. Adding more Men With Guns to the country does nothing to change a situation where all decisions are now made by Men With Guns.

But if occupation isn't the answer, what is? Orzala Sharif of the Afghan Women's Network had this reply: "I don’t believe and I don’t expect any outside power to come and liberate me. If I cannot liberate myself, no one from outside can liberate me." The only effective challenge to the dangerous and evil ideas of woman-hating religious fundamentalists must be another idea, the idea of full equality for women, and that idea can only be put forward effectively by Afghan women themselves.

Yes, woman-hating fundamentalism has deep roots in Afghanistan, but the idea of equality for women also has deep roots. Before the U.S. sponsored an army of the most violent fundamentalist elements to force the Soviet army from Afghanistan, the country had made great progress toward full equality for women, and not just during the Soviet occupation, but before, in the time of Afghan king Zahir Shah. Courageous Afghan campaigners for women's rights, many of them quoted in this video from Rethink Afghanistan, stand ready to revive this tradition, but they cannot make progress in that struggle while their country is under occupation.

And this is why Time's cover photo is not only dishonest but actually dangerous to Afghan women. As public support for the Afghan war wanes among the U.S. and European public, we can expect the supporters of the occupation to rely more and more heavily on the argument that "We must stay in Afghanistan to protect women's rights." In our globalized world, such a message, even if only intended for American or European audiences, will inevitably make its way to Afghanistan. Once there, it serves to link the cause of women's rights to a hated foreign occupation, to de-legitimize those Afghans who fight for women's rights as collaborators (just as the occupation legitimizes the religious fundamentalists who fight against it) and cements women's rights in the minds of the Afghan public as a "Western" idea. Equal rights for women is not foreign to Afghanistan, but we can make it foreign, if we continue to use the plight of Afghan women in a desperate attempt to prop up public support for our failing occupation.

At the end of the day, the U.S. will leave Afghanistan. Our patience and our funds are not unlimited, and shameless button-pushing of the sort practiced by Time will only have so much effect, for so long. And when we leave, Afghan women will have to face their oppressors without the "help" of the U.S. Army. What situation will we leave them in? Can we see that using Afghan women to justify our war only leaves them to reap the whirlwind, when we do finally leave? When U.S. elites finally decide they've had enough of this war, perhaps when a newer and shinier war beckons, their claimed concern for Afghan women will be discarded as inconvenient - it is, in fact, already being discarded, as the U.S. plans "reconciliation" talks with elements of the insurgency. Derrick Crowe has many good observations about the reconciliation process, I'll only note here his two main points: 1) There is much that the international community and civil society can do to make sure that reconciliation isn't used to steamroller over the rights of Afghan women, and 2) Thus far, the U.S. government has shown little interest in letting women's rights get in the way of its political and military objectives.

For U.S. opinion-makers, the rights of women are always disposable when no longer useful. Last week, the Iraqi website Niqash reported on the practice of Fasliya, in which young women are forcibly married as a means of settling tribal conflicts. The story quotes a young woman named Zainab, forced to marry at age 11 following an armed confrontation between two tribes: "When the family commemorated the anniversary of their son’s death, my husband would beat me. Every single day, the whole family looked at me as if I was the one who killed their son.”

You won't see Zainab's photo on the cover of Time under the headline "What happens if we leave Iraq", even though the Iraqi Society for Human Rights estimates that more than 800 Iraqi women have suffered her fate just since the beginning of this year. In Iraq, the U.S. is headed for the exits, and has no need for concerns about human rights to gin up public support for staying. When word comes from on high that it's time to leave Afghanistan, won't Time's concern for Afghan women be just as disposable?

Steve Burns is Program Director of Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice.

Steve Burns: Is liberalism an idea whose time is past?

A recent Gallup Poll showed widespread uncertainty about the "progressive" political label, with the majority of those responding (54%) saying they are unsure what "progressive" means. 31% felt they knew enough about "Progressive" to say that it doesn't describe their views, while 12% said that they were themselves progressive.

Looking on the bright side, for those of us in that 12% minority of self-described progressives, I'd say these results indicate an opportunity for us to define "progressive" to mean what we think it should mean, since most people don't seem to have any fixed ideas of their own. And if we want "progressive" to be more than a stand-in for "liberal", we should all give some thought to how "progressive" and "liberal" differ - or how we'd like them to differ.

I know exercises like this can seem divisive, and it's certainly not my intention to set self-described liberals and progressives at one another's throats, but there are real ideas at stake, and sometimes a discussion that starts with labels can go much deeper.

Here an attempt at clarification, made while looking forward to others thoughts on the subject:

I think classical liberalism is based on the idea of an accommodation, or balance, between state power and corporate power. Under the liberal ideal, the vast bulk of the economy remains in private hands, and the private economy is pretty much a "no-go" zone for the ideas of democracy we take for granted in the political realm - i.e., economic decisions are not made democratically, and there's no expectation they should be - but this private economic power is held in check by government power and the power of organized labor.

If there was a golden age for this view, it was the 1950's and 1960's, when even many labor leaders (but probably not many of labor's rank-and-file) came to believe that a tacit agreement have been reached with corporate elites, with generous union contracts tied to large increases in worker productivity, in a "win-win" arrangement that seemingly could go on forever.

Of course, we all know what happened then. Corporate power rose up, crushed the unions, and then took control of our government. Today, there is no "accommodation", no "balance", corporate power is in control, unions are virtually powerless, and every government regulatory agency has been captured by the industry it is intended to regulate, with the Minerals Management Service being a prime example.

Modern progressivism is built on an understanding of this state of affairs. Recognizing that there can be no balance between corporate power and the people's power - because corporate power will never tolerate a balance and will always use every tool at its disposal to become ascendant - progressivism seeks to attack corporate power directly, by attempting to bring the economic sector under democratic control and by replacing private ownership with public (or even worker) ownership. A liberal would have no objection to maintaining the private, for-profit health insurance industry, as long as there are strong government regulations in place to control it, but a progressive, understanding that any regulations will eventually be circumvented, corrupted and even repealed, will demand that the entire health insurance function be taken over by the state through a single-payer plan. Under the progressive view, because corporate power can never be trusted or reined in, except briefly, life or death decisions must be taken entirely out of corporate hands and put in the peoples' hands.

You might argue, "That's not progressivism, that's socialism!" And, as an avowed socialist, I'd be hard-pressed to disagree with you. But the discussion I'm trying to initiate here is as much aspirational as it is definitional. That is, we should be talking as much about what we want "progressive" to mean as we do about what progressive, at this point, actually means to anyone (especially since it appears to mean not much at all to most people.)

Most of all, we should avoid the simple-minded task of placing progressives and liberals on a linear "political spectrum", with progressives a few notches to the left of liberal ("They want a 20% cut in carbon emissions by 2020, we want a 40% cut by 2015!") Instead, I'm arguing for a clean break from liberalism because I believe it is a dying philosophy which attempts to restore us to a time that can never be again (and maybe even wasn't there in the first place.) If progressivism has a future, it must be based on repudiating the liberal model and creating a movement for a democratically-controlled economy that can rise up and defeat corporate power, as decisively as corporate power has crushed all else before it. Given the shifting attitudes of our nation's youth, who have only known a world ruled by corporations, there may even come a day when we can call this program "socialism" and be done with it.

Steve Burns is Program Director of Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice.

Frank Pauc: Who cares about Afghanistan?

To date the war in Afghanistan has gone on for over eight years, at a cost of over one thousand American lives and about $280 billion ( give or take a couple billion ). The Taliban is in control of large portions of the country, and after all this time, we really aren't any closer to winning this war than we were back in 2001. The Afghan economy is dependent on opium production. There is nothing resembling a functioning central government in the country. It's a mess.

President Obama seems to have decided on a counter insurgency strategy to win this war. The strategy by its very nature requires years, probably decades of nation-building. This strategy might possibly work if it was being executed by some other nation besides the U.S. It won't work for us because, quite honestly, we don't have the patience for it. We are citizens of the United States of ADD, and collectively we have the attention span of a three-year-old. We pride ourselves on being able to accomplish the impossible, but we have to have results right now. We have enormous energy and ambition, but we do not, and perhaps cannot, take the long term view of things. The British were a patient people; they built up democratic institutions in their colonies during periods of time that lasted generations. They were extraordinarily successful, but even they gave up on Afghanistan.

I said that the current counter insurgency strategy could possibly work. I would like to emphasize the word " possibly ". A lot of factors would have to come together to make it a success. At this time, things are at a stalemate, and likely to remain that way. The most likely prospect in Afghanistan is more of the same thing; the U.S. pouring soldiers and money into the country and pursuing a goal that is probably a mirage.

If the war in Afghanistan is such a waste, why isn't there more of an uproar in our country? Polls show that Americans disapprove of the war, so why do we keep going on and on with this? It seems to me that we may say that we are opposed to the war, but in fact we just don't care.

There are several reasons for this apathy. First of all, the war is far, far away. Second, the war is being fought mostly by strangers. Only a microscopic percentage of American ever put on a military uniform; many people do not personally know somebody that has been in Afghanistan or that will be going there. The death toll has thus far been extremely low, so most people have not had to worry about having a loved one get killed in action. The war almost seems unreal to most of the population. We are like the citizens of the Roman republic, who sat safe at home while their legions defended against the barbarians. We know very little about the this place where our soldiers fight, and we really don't care to learn much more about it.

I have spoken to a number of people that oppose the war, but they make no effort to help bring about its end. Why? I don't believe that most people are lazy or uncaring. I think that most people are overwhelmed by events. Especially since the economic meltdown of 2008, many Americans have put the war out of their minds. This is understandable. If a person has lost their job or home, a war taking place on the other side of the world isn't that important. We are preoccupied with many things very close to home. A large number of people simply do not have the time or energy to focus on this travesty.

If people do not speak out against the war, it will not end. This is self-evident. So, what to do? To be honest, I don't know. I do know that somehow we have to convince other Americans that the war in Afghanistan is a big deal to them. They have to see that the war makes an impact on their lives. That is the challenge. The irony is that, if you are reading this letter, you probably don't need to do so. You are probably already actively opposing the war. The people that might need to read this, most likely will never see it.

For my wife and I, we need no further motivation to oppose this endless war. We have a son in the Army and he will most likely deploy to Afghanistan in the spring. For us it already up close and personal. My hope is that other people will do something to end this war before it affects their lives as deeply as it is affecting ours.

Frank Pauc is a member of Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice.

Steve Burns: 55 mph = 15% less gas used = no offshore drilling needed

Photo: Charlie Reidel, Associated Press

For all the talk about the Gusher in the Gulf, one fact has received remarkably little attention: the relatively small part of our oil consumption that's met by offshore drilling. The U.S. consumes about 5.2 billion barrels of oil a year (about two-thirds imported) with about 530 million barrels produced through U.S. offshore drilling - in the Gulf of Mexico, off the West Coast, and in Alaska. In other words, only about 10% of the oil we consume each year comes from wells drilled off the U.S. coast. Or, to put it another way: We could shut down every U.S. offshore well -- if we could, in fact, shut them down -- and not feel the loss if we would just cut our oil consumption by 10%.

10% isn't so much to ask, is it? I had this thought in mind while planning a trip from from Madison, Wisconsin to visit my mom in Urbana, Illinois, a drive along 270 miles of some of the least-scenic highway in the United States (On your left: corn, beans, beans, corn. On your right: beans, corn, corn, beans.) I'd complained as loudly as anyone about BP's criminal negligence, I'd seen the pictures of oil-coated sea birds, but was I willing to change my own oil-consumption habits in response?

A little research confirmed that if I simply cut my highway-driving speed from my usual 70-75 mph (I really hope no one from the Illinois Highway Patrol is reading this) to a Jimmy-Carteresque 55 mph, I could reduce my fuel consumption by 15% or more, enough to eliminate my share of the dirty and dangerous 10% we get offshore.

Before my trip, in an attempt to communicate a message (and also to keep myself honest) I taped a single four-foot-long sign over my trusty "Wisconsin Green Party" and "Bring Our Troops Home" bumper stickers. In large black letters on a bright construction-zone-orange background, it said:

55 mph = 15% less gas used = no offshore drilling needed

I then pointed my 21 year old Honda Accord southward, and committed myself to six hours of life in the slow lane. I have no dramatic experiences to report, no one tried to run me off the road or even sent a rude gesture my way. Hundreds and hundreds of cars and trucks passed me (a pointer for those who want to communicate by car bumper: more people see your message if you go much slower than the prevailing traffic.) On the other hand, no one pulled in behind me and decided to join in my 55 mph crusade, except for a couple of stretches when we were all slowed to 55 for road construction (Thanks for the helping hand, Illinois Department of Transportation!) and one long convoy of camo-painted Humvees, likely from the Illinois National Guard, who followed me down I-74, speed-limited under some obscure military regulation (Or could it be that soldiers who've fought in our oil wars know better than most the true cost of a gallon of fuel?)

Here are the numbers: 270 miles on 6.9 gallons of gas, or 39 miles per gallon. That's 22% better than the 32 mpg I usually get on my Madison-Urbana route.

Of course, the oil-consumption story is a bit more complicated than an equation on a big orange bumper sticker. About two-thirds of U.S. oil consumption is used for transportation, so we'd really need to cut all transportation use by 15% to get a 10% overall cut in consumption. And what percentage of transportation use is personal automobile transportation, as opposed to shipping, public transportation, and air travel? A good estimate can be gotten by noting that about three-fifths of transportation fuel sold is gasoline (as opposed to diesel or aviation fuel). Neglecting the relatively small number of diesel cars, let's take 60% as the share of oil consumption from personal cars, SUV's, etc. This class of drivers would actually need to reduce their fuel consumption by 25% to eliminate the need for those 530 billion barrels per year of offshore oil.

No, that's not going to come from just slowing to 55, but you already knew that, didn't you? Lots of things need to happen if we're going to break our national oil addiction and limit the damage from catastrophic climate change (reducing the average 1500 miles that the average meal travels from farm to plate, for example.) Right now, I'm imagining a solution in which "slow food" meets "slow cars." The Farmer's Market, Community Supported Agriculture, a garden, and something new, for me: I'm keeping my big orange bumper sticker and joining the "drive 55" movement.

Steve Burns is Program Director of the Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice.