Thank you gerard.  I will do the same.  I am more than happy to support a cause
that can effect change and help our nation return to values that reflect a sense of
humanity and care.  Your comments are always great, whether here, or on HP.

Felicity, we stay in Afghanistan and other wars not because of threats, veiled or
otherwise.  Instead I assert that we continue our warmongering because there is
so much money to be made for defense contractors, corporations.  They make
billions for providing our troops with nonpotable water, poor antiquated
equipment, etc.  Maybe not all of them do so, but I suspect it is the majority.  Just
consider the billions that have gone missing in Afghanistan.  How do you lose 6
1/2 billion dollars?  There is no accountability.

Traditional Democrat - I agree with you entirely.

Even if we left Afghanistan, which we should immediately, miscreant backward-looking Republicans would always halt investments in our future, whether it is in health care, education, infrastructure, or whatever.

Their goals are meant for plutocrats and for re-election, even if our country tanks.

It’s been revealed that Karzai has threatened the US by
telling it that should it leave Afghanistan,
Afghanistan will ally itself with China.

This is an ancient tried, and true way for petty
tyrants to manipulate powerful nations to do their
bidding - threaten to side with the adversary. This may
be a reason, the real reason, we are continuing to stay
in Afghanistan.

The mission is to split A Q with the Taliban. Make the taliban abide in peace and accept the Afgani Constitution?

You might just as well say, we’re here waiting for Jesus to return and free his people to paradise.

@sludge
I am completely with you when it comes to not voting. There is no reason to lend your credibility to a corrupt system. Let it alone.

Redwoodguy, I’m afraid that if you hope to change the mentality of a sixteen year old boy you’ll find it an up-hill struggle. It really is too late by then. As the Jesuits used to say…“Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man” So, if you hope to stop future futile wars then you’re going to have to get ‘em while their young and teach em not to pick up that gun.
For future elections there is really only one course of action and it’s very simple. The good people of America (I should say U.S.A.) could really upset the apple cart by just not voting. It’s as simple as that. Can you imagine the constitutional crisis that would ensue if NOBODY voted (of course it will never happen) but imagine, just for a moment. The incumbent politicos would have no mandate to continue and there would be no new “Potus”. As Mr O’Rourke said “don’t vote, it just encourages the bastards”

Two weeks before Australia lost it’s very popular elected Prime Minister Kevin Rudd,Twiggy Forest, an insignificant human being,powerful because he manages a mining company, said on mainstream tv,“Rudd is finished”. And we did nothing!
Obama, Bush,Rudd,Palin,different names only,the same corprotocracy runs the western capatilist show.These people are very small potatoes,aloud only to make small potato decisions.

Again and again we are at war. If only there would be a place to confront these so
called (humans) that purport peace yet make weapons and send out troops.

If only we could take these decision makers at the top - to a place of isolation and
confront them, alone, in their own minds, the minds that have have been schooled in our classrooms, and by our peers, and by time watching the television screen, the movie theatre…

If only, how we could replay the pain that the innocents of war have endured, the
mothers pain at the loss of they’re children. A man’s simple feeling of
hopelessness - due to the destruction of his village, and city.

Only in (hopefully) an afterlife - we will have a one on one conversation with these minds, that seem, so out of touch and feeling with the notion of empathy.

I am beside myself as I watch this once great nation squander our wealth pursuing this military action.

It is hardly a war, never declared, just a bully in someone elses home.

So, if anyone still wanted to crusade against the war, what would be an effective way to protest? There’s only one: Go out and teach young people about American State Terror and empire. Go find all those 16 year old boys who can’t wait to pick up a gun and fight for freedom. You’ve got about 2 years to teach them the ropes. Teach them about the American System of Military Backed State Capitalism.

Get out your Noam Chomsky reader and sit them down for a class on how it all works. How we use, abuse, and toss young bodies away like so many Johnny mops so that rich old pricks can get richer. Get them to read Howard Zinn’s “People’s History of America.” See if you can pound any sense into their testosterone soaked brains. Because this much is for sure, if the young ignorant ones won’t pick up the gun, you can bet your arse the old chicken-hawks like Dick Cheney ain’t going to do their won dirty work.

The number of Americans negatively affected by this war is miniscule. The amount of wealth being moved and created and controlled by this war is enormous. Hence, this war will continue until that ratio is reversed.

The losers are the usual young folk too ignorant to have learned anything yet about American state terror, and business empire building. They go off in snappy uniforms with testosterone bubbling over the lid to kill in the name of freedom and other idiotic ideas planted in their brains since kindergarten. They simply don’t know any better, and there is never a shortage of old, fat, gray haired greedy pricks willing to take maximum advantage of their ignorance. <yawn>

The American deaths from these modern wars don’t even surpass the Friday night shooting deaths in the average big city. There’s no draft, so the impact of these wars is so close to negligible that you might as well call it zero. Oh hell yes, there will be a generation of young people all mentally munged-up over this - just like Vietnam, but that axe won’t fall for years yet.

Money? Well, American people have never had any real say in how the money gets wasted, so it’s a neutral point really. Yeah, it’s billions! or it is trillions! or it is jickity-jillions! Makes no difference at all. No one actually knows what a billion dollars is or means anyway. Besides, when it comes to government expenses money literally does come from trees. Our promise to pay the value of a dollar? Yeah, it’s a promise to pay with another dollar! So, really who cares?

You and I are on the bottom of the pile. The guys with the guns, bombs and drones don’t take your calls, and they aren’t listening to your pain here. Get over it.

There is - and always has been exactly one and only one way to stop wars: Don’t pick up the gun Johnny.

“We’re stuck in Afghanistan as long as Obama follows his present policy.”
should read:
“We’re stuck in Afghanistan as long as Obama is President.”

People who support Obama are immoral individuals, for they support a man who murders for no reason at all.

I predict that we will build at least one huge permanent (though it may not be labled as such) military base much like the US embassy in Iraq. We will then say “mission accomplished” and draw down the enlisted troops. Many contractors and troops will remain however. It will be like Iraq, but with ongoing drone strikes etc. That is what I believe they are aiming for but it won’t work (not that Iraq has been any great success).

It was never about Bin Laden or Al Qaida. It is about empire for empire’s sake. These (american) people are criminally insane.

Faith:  I don’t know of any signature/ad campaign going on at the moment. The most recent one I know about came out of Psychologists for Social Responsibility PsySR (it’s on the web by name.) Such campaigns are frequent, and have some effect though not enough to force the government to acknowledge their point of view—yet. But at least they’re out there.  My contention is that every bit of doing anything helps, and a sizeable movement will grow gradually, especially if unemployment continues to rise ahd people lose homes and jobs and health care.
It’s going to take a lot, however, because many, many people are too scared to open their mouths—thanks to the pervasive propaganda and surveillance.
  Many people right now are working on the torture problem, one way or another. Over 100 churches have united in a Campaign against Torture, urging the Senate Intelligence Committee to make its now-finished 3-year investigation Report of U.S. torture public instead of keep it under wraps. This is of course important because if we don’t get a handle on this outrage, torture will pass as okay.  This interfaith organization is nationwide and can be found (with materials for download, for people to use to spread information about the project).  Look up:  National Religious Campaign Against Torture. NRCAT.

Iraq Veterans Against War (Google by the name) does a lot to try to end the wars and Chris Hedges has lent his influence with them.  It is one place I feel moved to help with contributions.

Mr. Boyarsky, allow me to enlighten you.  The reason
we are in Afghanistan is that military adventurism is
the only fiscal stimulus the Republicans will vote
for.  Ask ‘em for money for roads, for dams, for pure
research, for schools, for anything and they’ll say
“No.”  But ask them for money for blowing things and
people to smithereens and they’ve got their checkbook
out in the blink of an eye.  It suits their
fundamentally paranoid view of the world to be at
perpetual war; the side-effect of creating jobs for
Americans is just that, a side-effect.  Obama has the
very same tiger by the tail: ramping down the war
means bringing home soldiers and contractors, idling
the Raytheon, General Dynamics, et al. production
lines that make the weapons of war.  In an economy
where a few thousand jobs move markets and make/break
political campaigns, a few hundred thousand newly unemployed
citizens simply cannot happen. 
If we had a Congress that would redirect government
money away from war and weapons to useful investments
in our infrastructure and the education of our young
people, it would be no problem.  But we don’t.  And
there’s no sign that we will any time soon.  So
expect perpetual war, in one form or another, for the
foreseeable future.

To my mind:  The Obama Admin will only pretend and play
around this issue.  There is no veracity!  To them,
this is a non-issue.  Their ears are shut!  Get over it
folks.  Their ears are shut.  They don’t give a squat
about what we think.

Tell me where to send my $10 gerard.  In fact, I will send $10 for each member of
my family.  The greed and avarice that continues to reward those in power that are
at the root of all the deaths and mayhem affecting not only our troops, but the
civilians dwelling in their own homelands is appalling.  Absolutely appalling.
So, do I send my $10 to IAVA or where?  I am more than ready to oust every
elected politician that supports these continued and expanding wars.

Typo.  Sorry.  Suggestions.  (My connections work either too slow or too fast.Why?)

How come people commenting seldom make any succestions for organizing and working on some project together for change—non-violent because violence won’t work as well because it is too threatening for an overblown government, fragile and teetering in spite of all its military hardware and propaganda?

Anybody who buys into the Oblahma rhetoric about pulling out being complicated has also bought into the belief that Oblahma is his own person - bull! - he is bought and sold by the military-industrial corporatocracy - Everything else is noise and empty babble. War is an essential kingpin of any Empire (see English, Roman, Ottoman etc..)

Stick a fork in it, this Amerikan Empire is doomed.

But a lot more brown and dark skinned people worldwide will have to be blown to kingdom come before it happens.

Sorry to be so gloomy.

“Nobody in this White House debate seems to be raising the central question: Why we are there?”

Maybe there is a compelling reason why no one in our Administration is talking about why we have a monstrous military machinery roaming over Afghanistan & Pakistan:  Wall Street’s bankers and investors told them to say nothing because the truth might sneak out.

We are there to protect the Wall Street investment fantasies about a “liberated” AfPak “economic exploitation zone.”

What Rot these ‘leaders’ spew, and how shameful we
have such an incredulous press that always trusts
them, believes what they say, takes them at their
word, gives them another chance. 

The Rot goes so much deeper. There is a callousness
that pervades, that capitalism - a disaster for the
majority, as Adam Smith pointed out over 200 years
ago - has wrought.  The work to convince us that it
is normal and natural that we can be temporarily
rented for money has succeeded spectacularly. Putting
price tags on everything, people have become
accustomed to selling anything, even themselves.   
George Carlin was quite right when he pointed out
that the schools seek to produce obedient workers for
what are essentially the current-day mills. It is a
system of exploitation of the many by the well-placed
few whose enterprises, being exploitive and therefore
illegitimate, requires force to maintain the state of
affairs, courts that will not dispense justice, laws
that “protect the minority of the opulent from the
majority”.  What capitalism has NOT wrought is an
enrichment of the whole of the people.  In fact,
everywhere the capitalist agenda is carried out, the
greater the disaster for the majority.  Compare the
conditions just before the fall of the Kremlin in the
Soviet satellite states versus the domains under
which the US had complete supremacy, namely Central
and South America.  The former Soviet Bloc nations
had universal housing, employment and social
services, a modicum of security in old age and for
the orphaned.  What they didn’t have were Death
Squads a la Central and South America, nor did they
have the extreme destitution rampant in America’s
“little region over here which never bothered
anybody”. It was the Second World, yes, meagre, by
the standards of Western glitz, and living under a
dictatorship, elected or military or as a result of a
coup (as in the US), the Eastern Bloc nations did not
have it easy, but the comparison to what the US did
and continues to do to ensure the Third World of the
people of its hemisphere is despicable by any
standard. As an American, I have no standing to judge
what the Soviet Union did to its vassal states, but I
do have standing when it comes to what the US does,
and I say such reprehensible behavior by a nation
that is obsessed with its alleged greatness is
despicable and shameful to any real patriot.

Contrary to its dogma, work is not honored or
rewarded in the United States.  It is an owners’
paradise, where the well-placed, wealthy few are
protected from the vicious vagaries of the jungle
called the free market by steady taxpayer subsidies,
huge cost-plus taxpayer contracts, highly
protectionist trade policies, bail-outs, and laws
which are cobwebs for them, and chains of steel for
everyone else.  Corporations are coddled, while the
majority of hard working people, the working poor the
hardest workers of all, are left out to dry.  And if
ever there were people that the military empire ought
to be taking care of, if no one else, should
certainly not be the millionaires in politics, or the
corporations which ought to be able to take care of
themselves, but the ordinary soldier, put in harm’s
way for the sake of profits, who then returns to a
government that treats even them like dirt.  But then
capitalism prides itself for its ruthlessness, has
paid many writers to try to create moral
justifications for selfishness and the callous
disregard of others.

Given the headlines lately I feel that the most terrifying thing I’ve seen is all the
people who cursed Bush with such contempt for his actions, such distain for all he
and his followers represented, slapping Obama 2012 sunrise stickers on their
bumpers…

The pentacle of satire unfolds, a horrific sad statement of racism, war, hero
worship, confusion, control, hypocrisy. The final nail. A symbol of all this country
has failed to be.

Karzi threatened the U.S. yet once again today that any additional killing of women and children by drones would not be tolerated.

Who does he think he is?

Oh, boy, we have money for 10,000 wells in Afganistan with 9500 dollars for each well being kept by Haliburton. Same old dirty. Things never change really.
In the mean time Republicans are pulling social security elders under the train. Cutting benefits by freezing much needed increases, allowing part B mandatory Medicare to eat any and all increases.
Defunding people programs for heat and energy.

Wow, what a country. Next time I want to be born in Denmark.

murder and theft is legal in u.s; as long as it is done by a group of people. of
course, stealing, murdering, and sending young people to death had been legal
and a moral imperative in all lands and empires in which supremacists have
ruled.

in such behavior with specific rationalization employed [generally posited as
truth and utter justification for such behavior] u.s is not an exception or
uniqueness.

rationalization usually consists of demonization of targeted group of people,
defense of own ‘interests’, evocation of great perils or harm coming to a given
empire or country, unless war is not waged and ‘enemy’ crushed and thus
country or empire once again saved.

‘saving’ the country never seems to end; there is always at least one more ‘save’
to be made [or engineered].

so, voting in diff individuals, amounting to 000000001% of a group or mafia in
u.k, russia, france, u.s, canada changes nothing! tnx

Why let the bear out of the trap, especially if the bear is happy to stay in?

I wonder how many validated signatures could be obtained, (accompanied by a $10 or more donation sent to Iraq Veterans against War) to place an effectively designed ad in the New York Times (or to promote an online drive) demanding “Get Out of Afghanistan by the Date You Promised or we will NOT vote for you in 2012” ? ? ?

That ought not strain anybody’s budget or willingness.  Preference would of course be a huge and representative crowd of people in the street in D.C.  But something, anything is better than nothing right now.

And there was Ryan Crocker on my TV saying “Iraq was hard but Afghanistan is harder”, as if it’s all about AMERICA. Not about the millions they’ve killed. The same way Vietnam was about America and not the five million Vietnamese the US military machine killed there. Even a movie like ‘The Hurt Locker’ swept the Iraqis into a corner as if they were rubbish. The only Iraqi to put in a real appearance had a bomb strapped to his body. A nation that thinks this way is a danger to itself and everyone else. Apparently when America invades a country for its resources, it is doing the newest version of the ‘White man’s burden’, that colonial excuse for theft and genocide used by the British Empire, which is what Ryan Crocker was really talking about.

More hope for Nobama’s change… It ain’t. gonna. happen…