Report from WarIsACrime.org: Tonight the House of Representatives will try to vote over $30 Billion to escalate the war in Afghanistan. Here's how it's expected to go down (thanks to Peace Action for some of this):
First they'll vote on unemployment insurance as a stand-alone bill.
Then, following some unrelated votes, they'll debate and vote on the Rule for the Supplemental. Rules are procedural votes that caucuses of congress members serious about blocking something can vote against. Progressives don't tend to be serious, but there's a first time for everything, and we should ask them to vote No on the Rule.
Then they'll debate and vote on amendments to the supplemental. These are expected to include two good amendments to the war spending, which risk however providing members who vote Yes on the money the excuse that they also voted Yes on good amendments.
Then the "last votes" will come in the evening. Presumably these will include a vote on the complete package of the Supplemental.
Regardless of exactly how it goes, our demand is simple: VOTE NO! Vote No on the Rule! Vote No on the war escalation funding if offered separately! Vote No on a bill that includes the war escalation funding!
We've already identified more than enough Democratic No votes to stop this train if the Republicans vote No for their own crazy reasons (and some Republicans oppose the war).
Why Vote No?
Rep. Nita Lowey has already put the scotch on the civilian aid portion of the war bill, why not put the scotch on the rest of it? WarIsACrime.org has identified 21 progressive who can tilt the scales and bring the Afghan escalation to a screeching halt now. They are: Yvette Clarke, Steve Cohen, Jim Cooper, Jerry Costello, Barney Frank, Luis Gutierrez, Jay Inslee, Steve Kagen, John Lewis, Edward Markey, Doris Matsui, Jim McDermott, George Miller, Grace Napolitano, Richard Neal, James Oberstar, Jan Schakowsky, Mike Thompson, Edolphus Towns, Nydia Velázquez, and Anthony Weiner. YOU CAN SEND A MESSAGE TO ALL 21 OF THEM WITH ONE CLICK, COURTESY OF DEMOCRATS.COM, HERE. Capitol switchboard: 202-224-3121
On June 16, 2009, when 32 true Progressives voted No on war and we needed just 7 more Progressives to end the wars, these 21 sorely disappointed us. These 21 Progressives can redeem their 2009 pro-war votes now by voting against the $33 Billion War Supplemental for 2010.
If Rep. Lowey and others really want to stop the waste, why not stop the gush instead of the trickle? The $33 billion the Pentagon is requesting which only harms our national security?
One of the most lacking aspects of media coverage of Afghanistan is an historical perspective of how we got to where we are. So in the interest of providing this on this critical day, that folks may realize more war is really not the answer, I am reposting the below.
Yes, They Wore Mini-Skirts in Afghanistan
Women wore miniskirts in Kabul under the short-lived Marxist government in the 70s
Afghans are some of the most bombed-out, shot-up, messed-with people in the world. It started when Zbigniew Brzezinski decided to give the Soviets "their own Vietnam." The Afghans were in the midst of growing pains into a modern, moderate Islam, nominally socialist society, when Brzezinski heard the word "SOCIALIST?!"
According to recently declassified records and admissions by Brzezinski and Robert Gates, it was a full six months before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 that the CIA began to arm the conservative Islamic resistance against the nominally Marxist regime. The regime consisted of young Afghans tired of seeing their people starving over the hundreds of years, and filled their heads with idealistic thoughts about everybody eating, without being affiliated with the Soviet Union. But that didn't matter to Ziggy. The word Marxist was enough. They had to be taken out.
Those commies believed in the education of women, and for a time Kabul opened up to the world and women even began to wear miniskirts, unharrassed. Author and journalist Paul Fitzgerald, one of the first journalists to be granted access to the country after the Marxist coup of the Afghan monarch, says:
"Afghanistan had made significant strides in its efforts to modernize and construct a civilian democracy long before Pakistan was even invented. Afghanistan's progressive monarch gave women the right to vote in the 1920's while the rights guaranteed under its Constitution were debated openly and freely prior to the Soviet invasion."
What happened after the covert CIA attack of the Marxist Kabul government is history. We created the mujahadeen, some of whom split off to become the Taliban. Big mistake.
Afghanistan to this day is the most heavily landmined country in the world. On average 60 Afghans a month are still killed by landmines, most of them children who don't know what to look for as they play. It has the highest percentage of disabled people in the world, mostly from landmines. There have been over 70,000 Afghan landmine victims since 1990. Where did all these landmines come from? Most of them the Russians planted, after the CIA drew them in by destabilizing the nominally-Marxist government (not atheist, their flag had the Crescent upon it) to "give them their own Vietnam." As soon as the mujahadeen drove the Soviets across the border, with the help of billions of dollars in CIA arms and a few Stinger missiles, we turned our back Afghanistan like a bad boyfriend. Over the next ten years over 2 million Afghans perished through starvation, cold winters, and fighting among the factions and warlords we had armed, who were using the weapons they had left over.
Now Ziggy is whining that people are waking up, and that nations will be having a harder time getting people to fight each other. A report on a recent Council on Foreign Relations speech recounts:
"Mankind is now politically awakened and stirring," said Brzezinski, adding that this in combination with a fractured elite "makes it a much more difficult context for any major power, including currently the leading world power, the United States."
(For those preferring to watch the video of Brzezinki's remarks in context HERE IS THE YOUTUBE.)
On the occasion of this week's vote on continued funding for military operations in Afghanistan, it is fitting to include a short, recent interview of Zbigniew Brzezinski. Read it and weep. Please ask your congressman to spare the Afghan people any more war. Vote no on war funding. How about a little help clearing those 8 million or so landmines which remain to this day instead, so that sticking a plow in the ground, to grow food, is not something which might get your legs blown off? We didn't plant them, the Russians did. But we had a little something to do with it.
CONTACT CONGRESS, SAY VOTE NO ON WAR FUNDING.
No Regrets: How Jimmy Carter and I Started the Muj (Alexander Cockburn's Counterpunch)
Interview of Zbigniew Brzezinski
Q: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs ["From the Shadows"], that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?
Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.
Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?
Brzezinski: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.
Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything today?
Brzezinski: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.
Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic [integrisme], having given arms and advice to future terrorists?
Brzezinski: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?
Q: Some stirred-up Moslems? But it has been said and repeated: Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today.
Brzezinski: Nonsense! It is said that the West had a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid. There isn't a global Islam. Look at Islam in a rational manner and without demagoguery or emotion. It is the leading religion of the world with 1.5 billion followers. But what is there in common among Saudi Arabian fundamentalism, moderate Morocco, Pakistan militarism, Egyptian pro-Western or Central Asian secularism? Nothing more than what unites the Christian countries.
Below: Afghanistan before Ziggy Brzezinski had to have his own Vietnam and f&^ked with it (women at Kabul University)
Record Store