The following images and excerpts highlight The Nation‘s opposition to military escalation.
“During the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama (pictured here in Iraq with General David Petraeus) not only had the good judgment to oppose the war in Iraq, he argued for the need to ‘end the mindset that took us into’ that war, So it’s troubling that he ramped up his rhetoric during the campaign about exiting Iraq in order to focus on what he calls the ‘central front in the war on terror’–Afghanistan.”–Katrina vanden Heuvel AP Images
“Many Afghans regard us as foreign, anti-Muslim invaders. And they see that the government we are backing is corrupt and rapacious.”–William R. Polk AP Images
“There are some 36,000 US troops stretched across Afghanistan, another 17,500 under NATO command, and 18,000 in counterinsurgency and training roles. They are so aggressively combat-oriented that the Afghan government itself continually objects to the rate of civilian casualties. It costs the Pentagon $2 billion per month to support 30,000 American troops. According to [Ahmed] Rashid, ‘Afghanistan is not going to be able to pay for its own army for many years to come–perhaps never.'”–Tom Hayden
Reuters Pictures
“The war in Afghanistan is an albatross that risks dragging down the Obama administration and undermining its progressive policy agenda. Afghanistan is now Obama’s war, and its failure would be Obama’s failure, with disastrous political consequences for other issues. The president’s political standing, the Democratic Party’s electoral prospects in 2010 and 2012, the government’s ability to fund health reform and other social priorities–all will be jeopardized if US policy in Afghanistan continues to falter.”–David Cortright
AP Images
“Afghanistan has always baffled foreign invaders. After three attempts from 1842 to 1919 to rule it, the British gave up; at the end of a decade of costly war, the Russians did as well. Neither understood the complex social and political makeup of the country.”–William R. Polk
AP Images
“Here’s the truth of it, though: when it comes to Afghan lives–especially if we think, correctly or not, that our safety is involved–it doesn’t matter whether five wedding parties or fifty go down, two funerals or twenty-five. Our media isn’t about to focus real attention on the particular form of barbarity involved–the American air war over Afghanistan which has been a war of and for, not on, terror.”–Tom Engelhardt
Reuters Pictures
“The cost-of-war gorilla cannot be ignored. Its sheer size demands that we re-examine and confront it. We must broaden our definition of national security so that it includes adequate funding for our communities in the form of healthcare, decent jobs, affordable education, a clean environment and a willingness to reflect on the way our nation engages the world.”–Jo Comerford
AP Images
“Since President Barack Obama took office in January the State Department has contracted with Blackwater for more than $174 million in ‘security services’ alone in Iraq and Afghanistan and tens of millions more in “aviation services.” Much of this money stems from existing contracts from the Bush era that have been continued by the Obama administration.”–Jeremy Scahill
AP Images
“The big Afghanistan debate in Washington is not over whether more troops are needed, but just who they should be: Americans or Afghans–Us or Them. Having just spent time in Afghanistan seeing how things stand, I wouldn’t bet on Them. Keep in mind: Afghan recruits come from a world of desperate poverty. They are almost uniformly malnourished and underweight. Many are no bigger than I am (5’4″ and thin)–and some probably not much stronger. Like me, many sag under the weight of a standard-issue flak jacket.”–Ann Jones
Reuters Pictures
“[Sen. Russ] Feingold said he is increasingly disturbed by the war in Afghanistan, where troop levels are escalating by the month, US casualties are mounting and the insurgency is expanding. ‘It appears that no one even asked the president about [Afghanistan] at his [July 22] press conference after apparently thirty or thirty-one Americans were killed in Afghanistan last month. How is that possible?’ Feingold asks. ‘People have to wake up to what’s going on in Afghanistan, and my vote is a request that people wake up to what’s happening, which is we are getting deeper and deeper into this situation in a way that I don’t think necessarily makes sense at all and may actually be counterproductive.'”–Jeremy Scahill
AP Images
“Unfortunately, the generals who run wars, and the defense contractors who profit from them, want to keep US troops on the ground in that distant land. And President Obama is under pressure to surge tens of thousands of additional US troops into ‘the graveyard of empires.'”–John Nichols
AP Images
“If Obama doesn’t give [Gen. Stanley] McChrystal the resources he needs, then the four-star general might quit. ‘Most commanders would offer their resignation’ if they perceive that the commander-in-chief isn’t giving them what they need, he said. In that case, McChrystal might have to say: ‘I’m not capable of doing it. Maybe somebody else is.'”–Robert Dreyfuss
AP Images
“In the next few weeks, Barack Obama will make a decision that will define his presidency. Will he escalate the war in Afghanistan, sending 40,000 additional US soldiers to reinforce the 68,000 already there to engage in an open-ended, nation-building counterinsurgency mission? Or will he redefine US objectives and ask his advisers to craft an alternative strategy? Two events intended to bolster the case for the former–Afghanistan’s August 20 presidential election and Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s August 30 assessment of the war–have instead demonstrated the wisdom of the latter.”–The Editors
AP Images
“Ask yourself: Wouldn’t the US have been safer and more secure if all the money, effort, and planning had gone towards “nation-building” in America? Or do you really think we’re safer now, with an official unemployment rate of 9.7 percent, an underemployment rate of 16.8 percent, and a record 25.5 percent teen unemployment rate, with soaring health-care costs, with vast infrastructural weaknesses and failures, and in debt up to our eyeballs, while tens of thousands of troops and massive infusions of cash are mustered ostensibly to fight a terrorist outfit that may number in the low hundreds or at most thousands, that, by all accounts, isn’t now even based in Afghanistan, and that has shown itself perfectly capable of settling into broken states like Somalia or well-functioning cities like Hamburg.”–Tom Engelhardt
