Obama Should Drop Plans To Escalate Afghan War; Send In Peace Corps Instead
by Sherwood Ross | December 16, 2008
President-elect Obama should drop his plans to escalate the war in Afghanistan, a country that never attacked America, out of pity for a helpless civilian population that will only suffer increasing misery from an expanded fight against the Taliban and its allies.
Recall military intervention was used to capture Panamanian military dictator Manuel Noriega for a drug charge in December 20, 1989. That illegal assault, ordered by President George H.W. Bush, killed 500 Panamanian civilians, wounded 3,000 more, and pushed 15,000 people out of their homes, an incredible price innocent people were made to pay to enable the U.S. to nail one drug-runner.
In Afghanistan, the civilian population has already paid a much higher price. "The basic ingredients of further Afghan disasters are in place," warns Norman Solomon, executive director of the Washington-based Institute For Public Accuracy, "including, pivotally, a dire lack of wide-ranging debate over Washington's options."
"We will kill bin Laden. We will crush al Qaeda. That has to be our biggest national security priority," Senator Barack Obama pledged during the televised presidential debate of last October 7.
Yes, and in so doing, thousands of additional Afghan civilians are liable to perish, likely far more of them then the 3,000 Americans massacred on 9/11 in New York and Washington.
In just the first two years after 9/11, the U.S. had already killed between 3,000 and 5,000 Afghan civilians, David Krieger noted in Counterpunch. And Jay Shaft, of the Coalition For Free Thought in Media, points to a United Nations estimate that up to 500 Afghan civilians are dying monthly from U.S. cluster bombs, most of them children and teenage boys.
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