
The following is a statement from March Forward!, an organization of veterans and active-duty troops, in response to
President Obama’s speech on the troop “withdrawal” from Afghanistan.
To read more from March Forward!, click here.
President Barack Obama said in his speech on June 22, “This has been a difficult decade for our country.”
But
it has not been difficult for everyone in the United States. It has not
been difficult for the defense contractors, with their billion-dollar
contracts churning out an endless supply of missiles to be fired and
armored vehicles to be blown up. It has not been difficult for the oil
giants, making record profits and getting access to new, untapped
corners of the most resource-rich region of the world. It has not been
difficult for the politicians, most of them millionaires themselves,
getting fatter with lobbying money, whose sons and daughters do not die
in combat, who smile and say they “support the troops” while they limit
funding for veterans to mere scraps from the table.
It has not
been difficult for the Pentagon generals, who sit in plush offices never
having to experience the horrors of war while sending us to experience
it over and over. Meanwhile they bicker and test out new strategies,
then go straight to making six-figure salaries with defense contractors
the day after they retire.
No, it has not been a difficult
decade for “our country.” It has been a very difficult decade for a
particular group of people. It has been difficult for those in need of
jobs, an education, a place to live and health care for their families;
those who have had no choice but to enlist in the military and are then
sent to fight other poor people thousands of miles away. It has been
difficult for the workers who are laid-off; the struggling families who
have their social services ripped away and the students whose tuition
has been raised as they watch hundreds of billions of their dollars
funneled into the quagmire in Afghanistan. And this decade has been
infinitely more difficult for the people of Afghanistan, who
overwhelmingly oppose the brutal occupation of their land.
But
for a small group of people, things have been great. And that small
group of people are going to keep things going for a least several more
years, despite the fact that two thirds of people in the United States
oppose the war.
What will change?
If the
President expected service members and our families to be happy with
the announcement that there will be only a minimal reduction now and
that U.S. troops will leave Afghanistan no sooner than 2014, his words
are falling on exhausted, wounded, fed-up ears.
We have been
through 10 years of war. We have been through constant, repeated
deployments, often with little dwell time with our families in between.
We have been stop-lossed and stuck in the military. We have been sent to
the bloodiest battlefields on the reckless, jumbled orders of arrogant
generals and politicians. We have watched over 6,000 of our brothers and
sisters come home in coffins. In Afghanistan, we have experienced an
ever-increasing number of casualties year-by-year—in 2010, twice as many
U.S. troops required limb amputations than either of the two previous
years, and experienced a stunning 90 percent increase in life-altering
wounds to genitalia.
Obama said in his address that “some” have
lost limbs, “some” have been psychologically traumatized. It is not
“some,” Mr. President. It is hundreds of thousands. It is
record-breaking. It is an epidemic.
For 10
years, we have come home to notoriously negligent mental health care,
been pumped full of drugs and sent back on more deployments. We have
come home to a shocking 30 percent unemployment rate for Iraq and
Afghanistan veterans. We have come home to a new battle, this time with
the Department of Veterans Affairs, having to fight for our benefits,
disability compensation, medical care and housing.
For 10 years,
we have seen the politicians stumble over themselves trying to explain
why we must fight, why the wars must continue. We have seen them repeat
the mantras of “al-Qaeda” and “9/11,” then see them admit that al-Qaeda
has virtually no presence in Afghanistan, that they are ideologically
opposed to the Taliban and other resistance forces, that 92 percent of
young Afghan men have never even heard of the 9/11 attacks. We have
heard them tell us over and over that defeating the Taliban, and driving
them from any political power, is the essential, heroic task worth
dying for—then we hear them tell us that behind the scenes they are
begging the Taliban to agree to a truce and take seats in a unity
government. In reality, they are making us fight so they can broker a
power-sharing deal with the Taliban.
The token reduction in
troops announced by Obama will have absolutely no impact on our lives or
those of our families. The eventual reduction of a mere 10,000 troops
will still leave more than double the number of U.S. service members in
Afghanistan than when Obama took office. It is so insignificant a number
that the frequency of our deployments will only be impacted to the
smallest degree, if at all.
Our reality will stay the same. The
frequent deployments will continue, leaving our families behind,
straining relationships as we miss years of our children’s lives. The
horrors we see overseas will increase. The treatment we get upon
returning home will remain criminally inadequate.
And there is
still no end in sight to this reality. The longest war in U.S. history
is set to continue indefinitely. We take the political promise of a
“full withdrawal” by 2014 like we take any political promise: with the
knowledge that these promises mean nothing.
But even if all
troops will leave by 2014, which is highly unlikely; that is in 2014. It
is 2011. How many of us will die, be maimed and be traumatized between
now and 2014? We do not want to wait until 2014. We do not want to wait
until next month. We should never have gone in 2001. This is a war—like
the war in Iraq, like the bombing of Libya—in pursuit of an American
Empire. But it’s not our empire. We don’t hold stocks in defense
contractors or own any oil fields. It’s a war for big business, a war
for their empire—but it’s a fantasy because the people in those
countries do not want to live under occupation, and they will resist. We
do not want to fight endlessly in a war for empire. We want all of us
home, now.
But our orders from the Pentagon are to continue to be
killed, maimed and traumatized; continue to be occupiers in a foreign
country against the will of the vast majority of its people; continue
fighting a war opposed by the vast majority of people in the United
States—all as pawns in a political game—for years and years to come.
This cannot continue, and Washington has proven it will change nothing. Enough is enough. We must take a stand.
This is why March Forward! will join the ANSWER Coalition, Veterans for Peace and many other activists and organizations in the October 2011 Movement
for a historic action on October 6, the 10th anniversary of the immoral
invasion of Afghanistan. In the spirit of the heroic people of Egypt,
we will occupy Freedom Plaza in an act of defiance—we do not want to
wait for change, we do not want to vote for change. We want change now,
and we will fight for it now.
We strongly encourage all other active-duty troops, veterans, and people of conscience to join us.
Click here to contact us about attending and helping build the October 6 action in Washington, D.C.