This video from the USA is called Veterans to Obama: Do Not Escalate in Afghanistan.
From Rethink Afghanistan in the USA:
An Afghanistan War veteran will travel to D.C. to deliver this message to the White House. Make sure your voice is heard.
Dear President Obama,
News reports indicate that you plan to send between 34,000 and 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan.
We urge you to reconsider this decision.
Expanding the war in Afghanistan will make Americans less safe, not more so.
Less than 100 members of Al Qaeda remain in Afghanistan. The Karzai government we once supported is controlled by warlords and is riddled with corruption. Pakistan’s stability will be gravely imperiled by an expansion of the war. Hundreds if not thousands of troops will be killed, along with countless civilians. Anti-American sentiment throughout the Muslim world will be inflamed by civilian bloodshed, facilitating recruitment by terrorist organizations.
The war will cost billions of dollars when we can least afford it, and will stymie your domestic agenda.
The cost of sustaining a military force in Afghanistan is $1 million per soldier per year – that’s close to $100 billion dollars annually with the troop increase. With the economy in shambles, the deficits generated by these enormous costs will compromise your domestic legislative agenda both fiscally and politically.
The United States has no vital interest in Afghanistan. If you choose to further escalate troop levels in Afghanistan, you will be making the biggest mistake of your presidency.
Please reject General McChrystal’s troop requests and begin the process of exiting U.S. forces from Afghanistan.
Signed,
Britain: Anti-war Lance Corporal Joe Glenton has been arrested and faces 10 years in jail for bravely honouring his moral responsibility to speak out against the illegal occupation of Afghanistan: here. And here.
Gordon Brown has faced another blow as a poll revealed that over half of British people do not believe that the military presence in Afghanistan is protecting Britain from terror: here.
Britain: The families of soldiers killed in Afghanistan condemned the Ministry of Defence last night for awarding its civil servants bonuses totalling £47m in the first seven months of this financial year: here.
The Afghan Red Crescent Society (ARCS) is complaining publicly today over a Saturday raid on one of its offices in Qalat by NATO forces: here.
News from Quebec in Canada:
Hundreds of republicans clashed with riot police outside the Black Watch regiment’s Canadian headquarters in Montreal on Tuesday, delaying a visit by Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall.
Protesters outside the building, where the prince was due to present new regimental colours, waved Quebec’s fleur-de-lis flag and brandished “Get out of Afghanistan” placards while chanting: “Majesty go home.”
Massive Defense Spending Leads to Job Loss: here.
UNICEF: More than half of Afghan children suffer from malnutrition: here.
Dear Kitty. Some blog 
Calls for debate over war role
Afghanistan: A group of 22 Labour MPs including former ministers Frank Field and Kim Howells demanded an urgent full-scale Commons debate on the war in Afghanistan.
They tabled an early day motion calling upon Gordon Brown to open the debate, and urging a parliamentary vote on Britain’s role in the war-torn country.
Left MPs Jeremy Corbyn, Katy Clark, John McDonnell and Alan Simpson are among members who have put their names to the motion.
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/content/view/full/83102
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Opinion: U.S. is doing no good in Afghanistan
By Malalai Joya
Special to the Mercury News
Posted: 11/10/2009 08:00:00 PM PST
As an Afghan woman who was elected to Parliament, I am in the United States to ask President Barack Obama to immediately end the occupation of my country.
Eight years ago, women’s rights were used as one of the excuses to start this war. But today, Afghanistan is still facing a women’s rights catastrophe. Life for most Afghan women resembles a type of hell that is never reflected in the Western mainstream media.
In 2001, the U.S. helped return to power the worst misogynist criminals, such as the Northern Alliance warlords and druglords. These men ought to be considered a photocopy of the Taliban. The only difference is that the Northern Alliance warlords wear suits and ties and cover their faces with the mask of democracy while they occupy government positions. But they are responsible for much of the disaster today in Afghanistan, thanks to the U.S. support they enjoy.
The U.S. and its allies are getting ready to offer power to the medieval Taliban by creating an imaginary category called the “moderate Taliban” and inviting them to join the government. A man who was near the top of the list of most-wanted terrorists eight years ago, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, has been invited to join the government.
Over the past eight years the U.S. has helped turn my country into the drug capital of the world through its support of drug lords. Today, 93 percent of all opium in the world is produced in Afghanistan. Many members of Parliament and high ranking officials openly benefit from the drug trade. President Karzai’s own brother is a well known drug trafficker.
Meanwhile, ordinary Afghans are living in destitution. The latest United Nations Human Development Index ranked Afghanistan 181 out of 182 countries. Eighteen million Afghans live on less than $2 a day. Mothers in many parts of Afghanistan are ready to sell their children because they cannot feed them.
Afghanistan has received $36 billion of aid in the past eight years, and the U.S. alone spends $165 million a day on its war. Yet my country remains in the grip of terrorists and criminals. My people have no interest in the current drama of the presidential election since it will change nothing in Afghanistan. Both Karzai and Dr. Abdullah are hated by Afghans for being U.S. puppets.
The worst casualty of this war is truth. Those who stand up and raise their voice against injustice, insecurity and occupation have their lives threatened and are forced to leave Afghanistan, or simply get killed.
We are sandwiched between three powerful enemies: the occupation forces of the U.S. and NATO, the Taliban and the corrupt government of Hamid Karzai.
Now President Obama is considering increasing troops to Afghanistan and simply extending former President Bush’s wrong policies. In fact, the worst massacres since 9/11 were during Obama’s tenure. My native province of Farah was bombed by the U.S. this past May. A hundred and fifty people were killed, most of them women and children. On Sept. 9, the U.S. bombed Kunduz Province, killing 200 civilians.
My people are fed up. That is why we want an immediate end to the U.S. occupation.
MALALAI JOYA spoke at San Jose State University Saturday and signed copies of her new political memoir, A Woman Among Warlords, co-written with Derrick O”Keefe. The survivor of four assassination attempts, she was elected to Afghanistan”s parliament in 2005 and kicked out in 2007 by the warlords. She wrote this article for the Mercury News.
http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_13755903?nclick_check=1
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Most Americans oppose Afghanistan troop boost: poll
11-nov-2009
WASHINGTON (AFP) — Most Americans oppose sending more troops to Afghanistan, as President Barack Obama nears a decision on whether to ramp up US engagement in the eight-year war, a poll suggested on Wednesday.
The CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey said 56 percent of respondents were against deploying more boots on the ground, while 42 percent support sending a larger US troop contingent.
Overall, 40 percent of those surveyed expressed support for the conflict, with 58 percent opposed.
The poll was released hours before Obama was meeting with his national security team and top military brass to sift through four strategic options on the future US approach in Afghanistan.
General Stanley McChrystal, the top US and NATO commander in Afghanistan, has requested 40,000 more US troops to root out Taliban insurgents and their Al-Qaeda allies from the war-torn country.
The CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey was conducted by telephone October 30-November 1. Its sampling error was plus or minus three percentage points.
An earlier CNN survey conducted in mid-October showed 59 percent of respondents opposed a troop increase, while 39 percent were in favor.
The latest poll also indicated that Americans are split over whether Obama is taking too long to announce his decision, nearly three months after McChrystal said the US mission was headed for failure without more reinforcements.
Forty-nine percent of the 1,018 adult participants — which included 952 registered voters — said the president is taking too long, against 50 percent who said he was not.
“There is a gender gap on this question, with most men saying Obama is taking too long and most women willing to give him more time,” CNN Polling Director Keating Holland noted.
“That’s due in part to the partisan differences between men and women, but gender differences on the use of military force, and maybe even differences in how the genders make important decisions, can also be contributing to the split.”
It also found substantial misgivings about the Kabul government, with 90 percent saying Afghanistan would not have a stable government within the next 12 months that could maintain order without assistance from US forces.
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There is no goal in Afghanistan…
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Re #4: yes. Except maybe the goals of special interests of big business involved in pipelines in Afghanistan; and of corporations like Blackwater, KBR-Halliburton, and others in the military industrial complex. And of Pentagon bureaucrats loath to admit that their long predicted “victory” is not happening, and therefore willing to risk many more dollars and lives into the Afghan bottomless pit. Not their own dollars, but taxpayers’ dollars. Not their own lives: soldiers’ lives.
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