I don't need to tell you about Afghanistan. The 10 years. The quagmire. The futility. The corruption. The hundreds of billions of dollars. Or as today's Midday open thread puts it
The war in Afghanistan just goes on and on. People die. People are injured. Billions of our tax dollars are handed over to private contractors, even as Washington insiders play the game of austerity fever. Rinse. Repeat.
Right?
So let's skip all that and get directly to the point. We can't make the Obama Administration withdraw from Afghanistan, but we can let them know we still care. The White House has set up a website, We the People, that provides a mechanism to create a petition, publish it, and, if 5000 people sign it, then
White House staff will review it, ensure it's sent to the appropriate policy experts, and issue an official response.
So I made up a petition. About getting out of Afghanistan. In one year. Here it is:
WE PETITION THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TO:
stop all military operations and withdraw all combat forces from Afghanistan by Ocotober 1, 2012.
The Afghanistan is pointless, a Vietnam-like quagmire, wastes money and is not in the security interests of the United States. We need to halt military operations there, bring out troops home, and save money.
The Afghan people are not our enemy. We are supporting a corrupt government that will never have the support of the Afghan people.
We need to take a completely different approach.
What do you think?
The catch to the White House petition mechanism is that any petition has to get 150 signatures before it will become visible on the site. I have a 'superseekrit' URL that I am supposed to give out
The superseekrit URL to my petition
to try to get to a hundred and fifty signatures. So there it is. If you think this is a worthwile petition, perhaps more worthy of consideration by the Administration than such as
Aid the Lunar Revolution in overthrowing the oppressive Celestian regime in Equestria.
or
Reform the coinage system.
then please follow the link and sign the petition. Let's see if we can get 150 signatures, at which point the petition will become visible to everyone and, I suspect, will become rather popular.
The superseekrit URL to my petition.
What's the downside for you? You have to sign up on the website. You have to give them contact information. You'll probably get emails from the White House and the Obama campaign asking for money and volunteering. After all, they haven't gone to all this trouble to set up this website JUST because they want to see what people are interested in!
I assume you can eventually unsubscribe to these emails but, I will admit, they could be a nuisance. (From my perspective, I'm interested in seeing what the White House and the campaign sends out, even if I'm not going to send them a nickel or volunteer like I did in '08, so I don't really mind).
But once you're in, you can sign any petition you like. For example, I signed this one:
End the destructive, wasteful and counterproductive "War on Drugs"
and it's alrady gotten almost 8,000 signatures. Do I expect the administration to end the War on Drugs? No, but do think it's good to let them know how we feel about it? Yes.
I think there's a number of petitions it would be worthwile to concoct and see what kind of response the administration provided. What about you?
The superseekrit URL to my petition.
Thanks.