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Kucinich: We are Not Exiting Afghanistan. We are Staying.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 2, 2012
Kucinich: We are Not Exiting Afghanistan. We are Staying.
Strategic Partnership Agreement Commits U.S. to Afghanistan for the Indefinite Future
WASHINGTON - May 2 - Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), who has led the call to end the war in Afghanistan, today released the following statement after President Obama announced that the U.S. has signed a Strategic Partnership Agreement with Afghanistan.
“Yesterday, the President announced that the U.S. signed a Strategic Partnership Agreement with Afghanistan, committing the United States to the country for a long time to come. The agreement addressed the transition to Afghan-led security forces by 2014. Human and monetary costs to the U.S. will continue to skyrocket.
“According to a recent article in The Atlantic, the U.S. spends an estimated $14,000 per Afghan troop per year. The long-term costs to the U.S. to train the 352,000 Afghan security troops we are counting on to allow the withdrawal of U.S. troops will be over $4 billion per year; or more than $40 billion over the next ten years. The Associated Press recently highlighted a report that raises significant questions regarding International Security Assistance Force claims that there have been Afghan-led military operations, an indicator of progress toward Afghan military self sufficiency, a cornerstone of our strategy.
“It is widely recognized that much of Al-Qaeda’s leadership and presence in Afghanistan has been decimated. Since the death of Osama bin Laden exactly one year ago, we have lost 381 U.S. troops. The President stated that ‘we must give Afghanistan the opportunity to stabilize.’ The assertion that maintaining a long-term presence in the country is the best way to prevent future attacks on the U.S. belies the reality on the ground: that our mere presence is destabilizing. The events of the past few months alone – the Koran burnings, coordinated attacks by the Taliban in Kabul, and the killing of Afghan civilians by a U.S. solider – should be enough of an indication that more time in Afghanistan is not the answer.
“America has been lulled to sleep by the mindboggling elongation of a war seven thousand miles away. The plain fact is we are not exiting Afghanistan, despite the appearances which the White House is trying to create. We are staying. Have we learned nothing from ten years of quagmire? It is time to bring our troops home safely and responsibly.”
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http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2012/05/02-1
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In Midnight Signing Ceremony, Obama Promises at Least Ten More Years of War in Afghanistan
One thing crystal clear in secretive US-Afghan 'strategic partnership agreement': War not even close to ending
by Common Dreams staff
May 2, 2012
President Obama's secret trip to Afghanistan, shrouded in secrecy for security reasons, culminated in a midnight meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the signing of a 'strategic partnership agreement', the full details of which have not been made available to either the American or Afghan public.
The agreement, broadly understood, codifies the ongoing conditions under which the US government agrees to operate in Afghanistan and will guide policies on the management of military bases, authority over detainees, the execution of night raids and other security operations, and will set conditions for troop levels and residual US forces that will remain in Afghanistan even after a 'withdrawal' commences in 2014. The agreement also deals with ongoing financial support for the Afghan government and military into the future.
Though Obama spoke optimistically of 'light of a new day' in Afghanistan and many media reports heralded the agreement as a 'signal to the end of war', other analysts arrived at different conclusions.
Read the full article at:
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/05/02-6
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Obama's midnight dash to Kabul shows that he dare not visit the place in daylight
By Peter Foster
May 2, 2012
If ever there was an image to convey the limits of the UK-US success in Afghanistan, it was the way that Barack Obama, the Commander-in-Chief of the liberating, Taliban-scattering forces was forced to skulk into Kabul last night under the cover of darkness.
.... after landing at Bagram Airbase just after 10pm local time, there was a low-level, cover-of-darkness of helicopter insertion to the Presidential Palace where the ten-page deal (which contains no specifics on funding or troop levels) was signed around midnight.
After the signing, there was just time for Mr Obama to duck into hangar and make a rousing address to the poor troops who must daily wonder which direction enemy fire is coming from, before making an address to the nation. This was, of course, another perfect excuse for the President to remind everyone of his heroic decisions in the Situation Room a year ago.
Mr Obama tried to make a virtue out of absurdity, referring to a “new light” breaking on the horizon for Afghanistan, even as he gestured to the “pre-dawn darkness” in which he was speaking, but even Mr Obama oratorical skills couldn’t disguise the tail-between-the-legs ‘optics’ of the event. It was terrible.
Read the full article at:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/peterfoster/100155044/obamas-midnight-dash-to-kabul-shows-that-he-dare-not-visit-the-place-in-daylight/
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What Did We Get for 381 US Dead Since the Death of bin Laden?
by Robert Naiman
Robert Naiman is Policy Director at Just Foreign Policy
May 2, 2012
No U.S. official has explained to us yet what we won in Afghanistan since May 2, 2011, that justified the additional sacrifice that we have made in Afghanistan since Osama bin Laden's death. No U.S. official has presented a case that we are safer than we were a year ago as a result of our additional sacrifice in Afghanistan, still less that our increased safety was sufficient to justify the additional sacrifice of the last year.
In his speech, President Obama said, "As we move forward, some people will ask why we need a firm timeline." I'm delighted that President Obama supports the principle of a firm timeline. But it's far from obvious that we actually have a "firm timeline," and if we do, exactly what it is. Certainly there is no timeline for when all U.S. troops will be withdrawn. President Obama did seem to imply that we can be sure that there will be no U.S. troops involved in "combat" in Afghanistan after December 31, 2014. But they may be involved in "counterterrorism," which presumably is combat, and "training," and if you ask the military what "training" is, they will say it includes embedding with Afghanistan troops who are engaged in combat. So "training" is also combat. And therefore it is far from obvious that we actually have a "firm timeline" for anything.
If it's a good idea to end "combat" by December 31, 2014, how do we know it's not a good idea to end "combat" by December 31, 2013, or by December 31, 2012? Shouldn't someone have to explain this? If the government wants to regulate a chemical, it has to do a cost-benefit analysis of the regulation. Shouldn't the government have to do a cost-benefit analysis of keeping tens of thousands of U.S. troops in Afghanistan for another 2 years, given the huge sacrifice involved? Shouldn't that be a public document that outside experts can examine?
In his speech, President Obama said, "Others will ask why we don't leave immediately." Isn't that a "strawman" argument? Is a single Member of Congress actually proposing that we "leave immediately"? Could 90,000 people "immediately" leave a rock concert or a football game in a safe way, even if they were sober and unarmed? Wouldn't we want them to file out in an orderly and deliberate way? Except for rhetorical flourish, is anyone really arguing that 90,000 U.S. troops should leave Afghanistan "immediately"? If we pulled all U.S. troops from Afghanistan within a year, wouldn't most war critics be satisfied by that? Therefore isn't the real question that the Administration has to answer not "why can't we leave immediately?" but "why can't we leave within a year?" Didn't we withdraw tens of thousands of troops from Iraq in a matter of months?
Regardless of when we withdraw troops, couldn't we end offensive combat immediately while we try to pursue peace talks? The official policy of the international community towards the Syrian civil war is to support a ceasefire followed by political talks. Why isn't this the official policy of the international community towards the civil war in Afghanistan? If we ended offensive combat operations, wouldn't U.S. casualties in Afghanistan fall considerably? Isn't that what happened in Iraq?
Read the full article at:
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/node/1207
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One Year After Bin Laden’s Death, Bring the Troops Home Now
by Kevin Martin and Michael Eisenscher
May 2, 2012
Kevin Martin is Executive Director of Peace Action, the country’s largest peace and disarmament organization with 100,000 members and over 70,000 on-line supporters.
Michael Eisenscher is National Coordinator of U.S. Labor Against the War (USLAW) a network of over 190 national, regional and local unions and other labor organizations.
Today marks one year since the death of Osama bin Laden. The CIA estimates there are fewer than 100 al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan. Since ‘getting Bin Laden’ and defeating al Qaeda were the stated reasons the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in 2001, President Barack Obama should use the anniversary to announce the end of the U.S. war in Afghanistan.
Instead, his administration has negotiated an agreement with President Hamid Karzai’s government for a U.S. presence in that country until at least 2024, ten years past the supposed date for withdrawal of U.S. combat troops. The U.S. and its NATO allies are supposed to commit to ongoing training of the Afghan military, as well as development aid. Obama swept into Afghanistan in the middle of the night to sign the agreement, but full details of the agreement remain secret.
If the agreement covers a ten year period, commits U.S. military forces for training and counter-insurgency (which means inevitable combat), obligates the U.S. to continue providing billions of taxpayer dollars annually in aid (essentially bankrolling the entire Afghan government and military), and posits support for any number of "nation-building" measures, isn't this in fact a treaty, subject to U.S. Senate ratification, rather than an intergovernmental memorandum of agreement?
Karzai apparently feels obligated to take the agreement to his parliament for approval. Doesn’t Obama have a similar obligation - one imposed by the U.S. Constitution? It’s not clear what the year since the killing of Bin Laden has done to improve U.S. or Afghan security. It’s even less clear what staying for another dozen years will do for either country.
Read the full article at:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/05/02-4
83 replies
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= new reply since forum marked as read
If you're gonna be "outspoken", shouldn't you have something to "spoke" about?
... "Moulitsas argues that the congressman hasn't accomplished anything at all, and -- though I know I'm going to get slammed for saying this -- I have to agree. Sure, it's good to see a politician standing up for his beliefs and fighting for a point of view that might not otherwise be represented. But there are ways to do that and simultaneously be an effective legislator. Kucinich simply isn't, and he's never really tried hard to be. (You could also argue -- I would -- that the way he goes about things makes him pretty ineffective as a spokesman for his ideals.)
...according to the Web site GovTrack, of the 97 bills Kucinich has sponsored since taking office in 1997, only three have become law. Ninety-three didn't even make it out of committee.
The three that were enacted are, in chronological order from first to last: A bill "to make available to the Ukranian Museum and Archives the USIA television program 'Window on America,'" a bill "to designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 14500 Lorain Avenue in Cleveland, Ohio as the 'John P. Gallagher Post Office Building" and a bill "proclaiming Casimir Pulaski to be an honorary citizen of the United States posthumously."
That's it! For all his huffin' & puffin' this is the sum total of his career in Congress. Oh, and mugging for any camera in sight, especially Fox News.
Do all converts have to fall in line with the Dennis Kucinich wing of the party? If not, are they Unclean? 
Welcome to our big tent.
At one time or another, I've heard the very same accusations you've laid out against Markos, made against the people you've obviously embraced ("rare exceptions"
. So when was this "purity test" devised? Who devised it? And who determines who passes it? A committee of YOU? Wow, you wield much more power than I ever could have imagined. Must be nice to be YOU.
http://www.myleftwing.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=17649
The perversion of the whole "big tent" meme is a device used by 1% sponsored RWers to make it acceptable for them to infiltrate and corrupt the Dem party with their RW ideology, and thereby render the Dem party largely ineffective as an opposition to the 1% and the GOP.
The purity test is not expressing, and or acting in accordance with, RW ideas and RW ideology, particularly those of the republican party. An example of those failing the purity test would be those who have adopted the ideas of Ronald Reagan. When you become your enemy, game over, they won.
The purity test was devised by everyone that ever wanted the Democratic Party to act as a unified body for the purpose of bringing into being, and then preserving, a nation based on justice, equality, compassion, and freedom.
Yeah, that's my purity test. Deal with it. I have absolutely no use whatsoever for any RW ideologies or those that corrupt the Democratic Party with them, and I make no apologies.
As for Ms. Huffington and Cenk, I don't have enough information about them to have an adequately informed opinion. But from what I have gleaned from listening to him on the radio, it appears to me that Cenk is for real.
I'm not buying Moulitsas.
What you refer to as the "Kucinich" wing of the Party is the very same thing as the traditional FDR wing of the Democratic Party.
The traditional wing of the Democratic Party supports the interests of the 99% over those of the 1%. This wing of the Party believes that people are more important than the profit making abilities and other interests of the 1%.
The Third Way supports the interests of the 1% over those of the 99%. This party, (some may call it a wing of the Democratic Party), like the GOP, believes that the profit making abilities and other interests of the 1% take precedence over the interests and needs of human beings.
By placing profit over people, all pretensions of being socially Democratic are rendered moot. Profit will always take precedence over the needs of the 99%, despite the duplicitous pleas and reassurances of the impostor Third Way that serves the 1%, and the majority of people will continue to suffer and become more powerless as the power of the 1% continues to grow.
Fuck all republicans, I mean it, fuck every one of them, including the ones pretending to be Democrats. And fuck their greed driven anti-human ideas, ideology, and actions as well.
Have a nice day.
The perversion of the whole "big tent" meme is a device used by 1% sponsored RWers to make it acceptable for them to infiltrate and corrupt the Dem party with their RW ideology, and thereby render the Dem party largely ineffective as an opposition to the 1% and the GOP.
The purity test is not expressing, and or acting in accordance with, RW ideas and RW ideology, particularly those of the republican party. An example of those failing the purity test would be those who have adopted the ideas of Ronald Reagan. When you become your enemy, game over, they won.
The term Third Way refers to various political positions which try to reconcile right-wing and left-wing politics by advocating a varying synthesis of right-wing economic and left-wing social policies.[1] Third Way was created as a serious re-evaluation of political policies within various centre-left progressive movements in response to the ramifications of the collapse of international belief in the economic viability of the state economic interventionist policies that had previously been popularized by Keynesianism; and the corresponding rise of popularity for neoliberalism and the New Right.[2] It supports the pursuit of greater egalitarianism in society through action to increase the distribution of skills, capacities, and productive endowments, while rejecting income redistribution as the means to achieve this.[3] It emphasizes commitment to: balanced budgets, providing equal opportunity combined with an emphasis on personal responsibility, decentralization of government power to the lowest level possible, encouragement of public-private partnerships, improving labour supply, investment in human development, protection of social capital, and protection of the environment.[4]
The term was later used by politicians in the 1990s who wished to incorporate Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan's projects of economic deregulation, privatization, and globalization into the mainstream centre-left political parties.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Way_%28centrism%29
The term was later used by politicians in the 1990s who wished to incorporate Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan's projects of economic deregulation, privatization, and globalization into the mainstream centre-left political parties.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Way_%28centrism%29
The purity test was devised by everyone that ever wanted the Democratic Party to act as a unified body for the purpose of bringing into being, and then preserving, a nation based on justice, equality, compassion, and freedom.
Yeah, that's my purity test. Deal with it. I have absolutely no use whatsoever for any RW ideologies or those that corrupt the Democratic Party with them, and I make no apologies.
As for Ms. Huffington and Cenk, I don't have enough information about them to have an adequately informed opinion. But from what I have gleaned from listening to him on the radio, it appears to me that Cenk is for real.
I'm not buying Moulitsas.
What you refer to as the "Kucinich" wing of the Party is the very same thing as the traditional FDR wing of the Democratic Party.
The traditional wing of the Democratic Party supports the interests of the 99% over those of the 1%. This wing of the Party believes that people are more important than the profit making abilities and other interests of the 1%.
The Third Way supports the interests of the 1% over those of the 99%. This party, (some may call it a wing of the Democratic Party), like the GOP, believes that the profit making abilities and other interests of the 1% take precedence over the interests and needs of human beings.
By placing profit over people, all pretensions of being socially Democratic are rendered moot. Profit will always take precedence over the needs of the 99%, despite the duplicitous pleas and reassurances of the impostor Third Way that serves the 1%, and the majority of people will continue to suffer and become more powerless as the power of the 1% continues to grow.
Fuck all republicans, I mean it, fuck every one of them, including the ones pretending to be Democrats. And fuck their greed driven anti-human ideas, ideology, and actions as well.
Have a nice day.
On this we agree. However, what we disagree on is your test of purity, and apparently so does the Democratic base of the party. Otherwise, we'd be saying President Dennis Kucinich right about now.
You've convinced me, but you haven't had much success convincing the 98% of Democrats who have not, and will not support someone like Kooch as leader of the Democratic Party, let alone leader of the free world. There's the rub. Dennis' fans have a dominant internet presence, and while you've conquered sites like DU, we're not really your target audience, and we don't need convincing. You need to step away from the keyboard, and get out there and sell Dennis' thin record of accomplishment to the American electorate, and let them decide. Stop blaming everyone & everything else for Dennis' failure to launch. And good luck with that!
And that was within the last decade.
is about the most pitiful Obama bashing piece you have ever posted. That scummy post probably came straight from Rove's typewriter. The type of person that would pretend to be a Democrat yet think that post belongs on DU is beyond the lame excuses his enablers can come up with. 
Sid
As opposed to walking and swimming their way back to the United States.
The Ford administration used planes and boats to remove ALL U.S. troops from Vietnam and that worked out well.
However, if they had not delayed so long to withdraw every last soldier this scene could have been avoided:
Will a similiar scene be repeated in Afghanistan?
U.S. troops were stationed at the U.S. Embassy and other locations after March, 1973 and before the fall of Saigon.
On April 29, 1975 U.S. Marines were used to evacuate people from the U.S. embassy "and various parts of the city" to U.S. Navy ships.
"American helicopters began evacuating South Vietnamese, U.S., and foreign nationals from various parts of the city and from the U.S. embassy compound. Operation Frequent Wind had been delayed until the last possible moment, because of U.S. Ambassador Graham Martin's belief that Saigon could be held and that a political settlement could be reached.
Schlesinger announced early in the morning of 29 April 1975 the evacuation from Saigon by helicopter of the last U.S. diplomatic, military, and civilian personnel."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War#Fall_of_Saigon
At least 63 of those nations have U.S. military bases.
This map is old and it's likely U.S. troops are stationed in even more nations today.
...[font size=3]and every single dollar thrown down that Black Hole is,"... in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."[/font]
---Thank You, Republican President Dwight Eisenhower[/font]
A child will go to bed hungry tonight,
and an American will die for lack of access to health care.
[font color=firebrick][center]”Unlike the other candidates, I am not funded by those corporate interests.
I owe them no loyalty, and they have no influence over me or my policies.”
---Dennis Kucinich, Campaign 2008 [/font]
[/center]
tells the Truth. 
We ain't going anywhere, folks, and if you think that we are then you're a sucker. There will be American troops on the ground there for a very long time. 
