The direct cost of the war in Afghanistan is $105 billion this year. But the indirect costs are even greater.
Thousands have been killed in the fighting.
• 1300 U.S. military casualties.
• Over 20,000 Afghani “declared” civilian casualties.
Military occupation prevents civilian reconstruction efforts.
• Long-term projects are impossible in war zones.
• The Bagram airbase is soon to undergo a $60 million expansion to double its size. The prison at Bagram is being expanded to house five times as many prisoners as are presently at Guantanamo.
The war is not helping Afghani women.
• U.S. prioritizes military victory over human and women’s rights.
• U.S.-backed government is as anti-woman and corrupt as the Taliban.
• Increasing numbers of Afghani women are committing suicide by setting fire to themselves to escape difficult lives.
While we waste $105 Billion each year in Afghanistan, many problems at home in the U.S. remain neglected.
Nationaland NY State unemployment rates are over twice as high as they were in 2001 at 9.7%.
The U.S. infrastructure is deteriorating because of improper funding.
Five years after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans has not recovered, has poor flood protection, and suffers from unaffordable housing.

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George Santayana, born in Spain in 1862, observed that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Remember the old Rock and Roll song that includes this lyric, “Don’t know much about history…”? I’m afraid that this is true in varying degrees for many Americans. And it is this lack of perspective, and this lack of historical knowledge that prevents us from speaking out and protesting in large numbers when our government commits us to wars. In this essay I am going to look at some of the history of Afghanistan and the history of Iraq to show how the US made huge mistakes in 2001 and 2003 by invading these countries. And the evidence was already available to strongly suggest that fighting these wars would only lead to disasters for the US, Iraq and Afghanistan, rather than any path to peace, prosperity, genuine allies, and a just democracy.

Afghanistan’s history goes back many centuries and includes a lot of violence: assassinations and coups against governing figures. I found this Wikipedia entry interesting: In 1901 Habibullah Khan became Amir of Afghanistan. He was a secular leader who brought western medicine to his country, allowed political exiles to return, and repealed many of the harshest criminal penalties. Unfortunately, he was quickly assassinated.

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This year the Air Force will train more UAV pilots than fighter and bomber pilots combined and will rack up 190,000 hours of patrol time over Iraq and Afghanistan.

Every so often in history, something profound happens that changes warfare forever. Next year, for the first time ever, the Pentagon will buy more unmanned aircraft than manned, line-item proof that we are in a new age of fighting machines, in which war will be ever more abstract, ever more distant, and ruthlessly efficient.

The war begins each day on the long drive into the desert, just past the Super Buffet and the Home Depot and the Petco, and the swath of look-alike houses that cling to the city's edge, along the forty miles of the strangest daily commute in America. Air Force Staff Sergeant Charles Anderson plucks his wristwatch from the cupholder and crosses into the war zone. He wears the watch only at work, and the ritual shifts his thoughts away from the everyday, which lately has been occupied by wedding plans and house hunting. He drives in silence, no music or news, past rocky scrubland that mirrors the Afghan mountains, valleys, and plains he'll spend his workday patrolling.

First Lieutenant John Hamilton crosses over as he passes the High Desert State Prison, thirty miles outside Las Vegas, northwest on route 95. His cell-phone calls always drop off here, and over time he has come to think of the prison as the demarcation line between homelife and battlefield. A few more miles and Creech Air Force Base rises from the desert, a cluster of buildings at the foot of barren hills, cast gold by the early-morning sun. Captain Sam Nelson is the last to cross over. He steps into a plain brick building, home to the 42nd Attack Squadron, pulls his cell phone from his green flight suit, and leaves it on a counter with a pile of others. He passes through a doorway, from unclassified to secret, and the door shuts and locks behind him.

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Robert McNamara died the other day as seven American soldiers were killed in Afghanistan.

It wasn’t the deaths on the same day that made me remember McNamara’s folly. It was the sense that McNamara’s ghost is hovering over the new graveyard of America’s future.

McNamara’s team of Ivy Leaguers was dubbed “the best and the brightest” by the disillusioned war correspondent David Halberstam. They were deluded by their arrogance into believing computer-driven measures of success, like body counts. Though liberal and secular in temperment, they held a faith-based belief in victory. Fifty-eight thousand Americans died, along with countless Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians, because of these best and brightest. Not one of them went to jail. McNamara went to the World Bank.

Today another Ivy League president has placed his faith in Ivy League generals and an inbred crowd of three hundred national security advisers drawn from the same elite circles. They are the new best-and-brightest, and I believe history will show they are marching to folly in their “Long War.”

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Rethink Afghanistan is a ground-breaking, full-length documentary focusing on the key issues surrounding this war. By releasing this film in parts for free online, we are able to stay on top of news of the war as it continues to unfold.

We hope to raise critical questions regarding Afghanistan that Congress must address in oversight hearings, which inform the public and challenge policymakers. We strive for more discussion among experts on Afghanistan, like the debates seen below released in conjunction with our documentary campaign.

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There is a better plan for Afghanistan than what has been put out by the Obama Administration. Our engagement there must focus on diplomacy and humanitarian aid --not military force. In response to President Obama's announcement Peace Action has launched a citizen education campaign to promote sustainable solutions to the tragic circumstances in Afghanistan.

This eAction report focuses on actions you can take right now and this weekend. You can always call into the White House at 202-456-1414 and tell President Obama to enact a better plan.



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The war and occupation of Afghanistan has become a critical part of UFPJ's work, in light of a proposed escalation of troops by the Obama administration. UFPJ's stance on the conflict -- mirrored at the last National Assembly in December 2008 -- calls for a rapid U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan with a negotiated just settlement involving international parties, including regional neighbors.

The Afghanistan Working Group of UFPJ has begun to live up to the challenges of our work in the months ahead, starting a series of fact sheets meant to help regional and local groups organize in their communities. It is imperative upon us to create the same public atmosphere towards Afghanistan that we did for Iraq: making a continuation of the war effort politically unfeasible.

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