"That which you do not resist and mobilize to stop you will learn – or be forced – to accept.”
To the Anti-War Movement in the United States:
Barack Obama is sending a surge of 20,000 troops to Afghanistan.
An antiwar movement that does not move immediately to oppose the Obama doctrine of shifting the central front of the war on terror to Afghanistan, no longer deserves to be called an anti-war movement.read more...
The World Can’t Wait organizes people living in the United States to repudiate and stop the fascist direction initiated by the Bush Regime, including: the murderous, unjust and illegitimate occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan; the global “war of terror” of torture, rendition and spying; and the culture of bigotry, intolerance and greed. This direction cannot and will not be reversed by leaders who tell us to seek common ground with fascists, religious fanatics, and empire. It can only be possible by the people building a community of resistance - an independent mass movement of people - acting in the interests of humanity to stop, and demand prosecution, of these crimes.
The Battle of Marjah was supposed to be the centerpiece of the Obama escalation, showcasing NATO’s firepower against the farming community while emphasizing strategic changes designed to limit civilian casualties.
U.S. led forces have begun a military offensive on the Afghan city of Marjah that the New York Times describes as “the largest offensive military operation since the American-led coalition invaded the country in 2001”. Thousands of U.S., British, and Afghan soldiers, backed up by artillery and air power, are pushing into the city of 80,000.
This operation is a major test for the “Obama doctrine” – and a major challenge for anti-war organizations and individuals in the U.S., and for anyone who wants to bring a better world into being. Already 12 civilians have been reported killed, and as CNN reports “a senior military official said Monday the rocket hit its intended target”. Opposition to this war of terror, this unjust and in fact criminal war initiated and fought to extend and strengthen U.S. domination of a key portion of the globe, must grow in the days and weeks ahead, leading up to, but not only, at the major protests being called for March 20.
One quiet, wintry night last year in the eastern Afghan town of Khost, a young government employee named Ismatullah simply vanished. He had last been seen in the town’s bazaar with a group of friends. Family members scoured Khost’s dust-doused streets for days. Village elders contacted Taliban commanders in the area who were wont to kidnap government workers, but they had never heard of the young man. Even the governor got involved, ordering his police to round up nettlesome criminal gangs that sometimes preyed on young bazaar-goers for ransom.
But the hunt turned up nothing. Spring and summer came and went with no sign of Ismatullah. Then one day, long after the police and village elders had abandoned their search, a courier delivered a neat, handwritten note on Red Cross stationary to the family. In it, Ismatullah informed them that he was in Bagram, an American prison more than 200 miles away. U.S. forces had picked him up while he was on his way home from the bazaar, the terse letter stated, and he didn’t know when he would be freed.
Five Afghan civilians were shot and wounded by US and Afghan troops outside a military base in a restive area of the country that was the scene of a violent demonstration a day earlier, NATO said Friday.
The incident took place in the Garmser area of Helmand province on Wednesday, NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said in a statement.
The U.S. assigns to itself the right to slaughter civilians and children wherever it chooses on the planet, yet howls in outrage when its protégés on the other side assert the same murderous privileges. “In the same week that Americans wrung their hands over Mutallab’s holiday season threat, soldiers from their country murdered Afghan children.”
There are many unanswered questions regarding would be terrorist Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab. Mutallab, a Nigerian national, attempted to detonate an explosive substance on a flight preparing to land in Detroit, Michigan on Christmas day.