Saturday, October 17, 3:00 – 6:00 PM
HEALTHCARE NOT WARFARE RALLY
Texans will rally on the eighth anniversary of the invasion and occupations of Afghanistan/Iraq to challenge the government to end those wars and focus on national priorities such as healthcare and the economy.  The rally will include speakers, musicians, Iraq veterans, health care professionals, religious leaders, peace activists and families affected by lack of healthcare and the impacts of war.  Confirmed speakers and musicians include: Roscoe Overton, President, Austin Center for Peace and Justice, Dr. Jim Rigby, Pastor, St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Charlie Jackson, Founder, Texans for Peace, Medea Benjamin, Co-founder, Code Pink, Joe Carr, John Ramsey and Will T. Massey.  Join with your fellow Texans to help bring an end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan while standing up for healthcare and jobs for all.
Location: Austin City Hall, Cesar Chavez and Lavaca
Sponsored by Texans for Peace, CodePink-Austin, Austin Center for Peace and Justice, and other peace/social justice groups.  More info: Heidi at 565-2244 or [email protected]

Alexander the Great, the Persian Empire, Great Britain, the Soviet Union–all failed in their military occupations of Afghanistan.   Says Zamir Kabulov, Russian ambassador in Kabul, The U.S. has “already repeated all of our mistakes.”

by ROBERT MACKEY Raheb Homavandi/Reuters

September 21, 2009

An exhibit on the failed Soviet occupation of Afghanistan at a war museum in Herat, a city in the west of the country that also contains the remains of a citadel built by Alexander the Great.

Now that word has leaked out that Gen.  Stanley A.  McChrystal, the top American military commander in Afghanistan, has concluded that he will need more than 68,000 American troops to defeat the Taliban, the natural question is: how many foreign troops does it take to secure Afghanistan?

The fast answer is that no one really knows, since, as even late-night comics have noticed recently, armies have been failing to do it for centuries.

On Saturday the leader of the Afghan Taliban, Mullah Muhammad Omar, weighed in with an op-ed of sorts posted on a Taliban Web site — helpfully made available in English, as well as Pashto, Farsi, Arabic, Urdu, Finnish, German, Spanish, Russian, French, Somali and Malay/Indonesian — noting that history has not been kind to foreign forces seeking to control Afghanistan, “from the time of the aggression of Alexander.” Mullah Omar invoked a somewhat more recent example as well, pointing out that the Afghans “fought against the British invaders for eighty years from 1839 to 1919 and ultimately got independence by defeating Britain.” While the world has obviously changed a good bit since Alexander arrived in Afghanistan with an army reinforced by elephants, or the British seized temporary control of the country in 1878 with 33,500 troops, it has only been 20 years since the Soviet military tried and failed to fend off an insurgency by Islamic militants against an Afghan government they had supported.

In February 1989, when the Soviets finally withdrew from the country a report in The Times by Bill Keller noted:

Today’s final departure is the end of a steady process of withdrawal since last spring, when Moscow says, there were 100,300 Soviet troops in Afghanistan.  At the height of the Soviet commitment, according to Western intelligence estimates, there were 115,000 troops deployed.

On Monday, my colleagues Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker reported that the largest troop increase currently under consideration would bring the total number of American troops there to 113,000 — almost exactly the same size as the Soviet force:

Pentagon and military officials involved in Afghanistan policy say General McChrystal is expected to propose a range of options for additional troops beyond the 68,000 American forces already approved, from 10,000 more troops to as many as 45,000.

As The Lede noted in March, when Mullah Omar issued a call for help from Pakistani militants, there are an estimated 15,000 Taliban fighters on each side of the exceedingly porous border.  On the day the Soviets departed in 1989, the BBC reported that “Kabul is surrounded by a mujahedeen force of around 30,000.” It seems reasonable to ask if a force roughly the same size as the Soviet one, aided by about 30,000 NATO troops, is big enough to defeat this Afghan insurgency.  The Americans do have some advantages the Soviets lacked.  In this struggle, Pakistan’s military and intelligence services are, to some extent, helping to undermine the insurgents, who are not being armed by a rival superpower.  Despite signs of rising discontent with the current Afghan government, the Taliban may also have less popular support than the mujahedeen enjoyed in the 1980s.

Although it is hard to conduct accurate surveys in Afghanistan, in one opinion poll carried out earlier this year for British and American broadcasters, just 4 per cent of Afghans surveyed said that they would like to see the Taliban return to power.

On the other hand, Afghanistan’s population is estimated to have doubled since 1979, so this foreign force now has to find away to police and provide basic security to about twice as many people as the Soviet one.

Instead of looking just at failed occupations of Afghanistan, it might be worth looking at what how many troops were deployed during the successful occupation of postwar Germany in the 1940s.  According to a Rand corporation study called “America’s Role in Nation-Building: From Germany to Iraq,” the U.S.  peacekeeping force in the one-quarter of postwar Germany it controlled in 1945 (an area that then had a population of about 17 million people and no active insurgency) included more than 290,000 soldiers and “a constabulary or police-type occupation force” of 38,000.

Looking closer to home, consider that there are nearly 38,000 police officers in New York City, patrolling an area of just 300 square miles, with a population of 8.3 million.  Given that, it is no wonder that Gen.  McChrystal thinks it might be tough to provide security to 30 million Afghans and police 250,000 square miles of mostly mountainous terrain with even 100,000 troops.

Then again, it is also possible that too large a force, rather than subduing Afghanistan, could serve to provoke the Afghan people.

One man who has suggested that more American troops are not the answer is Russia’s ambassador to Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, who was a K.G.B.
agent in Kabul during the Soviet occupation in the 1980s.  Last October Mr.  Kabulov told my colleague John Burns that the U.S.  had “already repeated all of our mistakes,” and moved on to “making mistakes of their own, ones for which we do not own the copyright.” One of the biggest mistakes the Soviets made, Mr.  Kabulov said, was letting the force grow too large.  “The more foreign troops you have roaming the country,” he said, “the more the irritative allergy toward them is going to be provoked.”

RESOLUTION 16

End the Silence on Labor Rights in Iraq

Submitted by Alameda Labor Council (Calif.), San Mateo County Central Labor Council (Calif.), Washington-Orange-Lamoille Labor Council (Vt.) and Wisconsin State AFL-CIO

WHEREAS, after more than six years of military occupation, more than 4,300 U.S.  and as many as a million or more Iraqi lives have been lost and our government has spent nearly $650 billion of taxpayer funds on the military occupation of Iraq, and yet real democracy in Iraq still remains more of an aspiration than reality; and

WHEREAS, one of the fundamental building blocks of a democratic society is the right of workers to join unions of their choice free of government interference, domination, harassment or repression; and

WHEREAS, after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the U.S.  nullified most of the repressive Saddam era legal code, but kept on the books and continued to enforce a 1987 law that Saddam Hussein imposed making it illegal for public-sector and public enterprise employees to join unions or negotiate the terms of their employment; and

WHEREAS, the subsequent Iraqi Interim Governing Authority continued to enforce this undemocratic denial of worker rights, and the newly elected Iraqi government imposed additional restrictions on worker and union rights, including seizure and freezing of union bank accounts and assets; and

WHEREAS, U.S.  and Iraqi forces raided and ransacked union offices and assaulted and detained union leaders, and management of public enterprises, including the oil industry, was directed not to recognize or bargain with unions; and

WHEREAS, a vibrant pluralistic independent labor movement continues to grow in Iraq despite harassment, beatings, kidnappings, detention, torture and even murder of trade union activists; and

WHEREAS, Article 22, Section 3 of the new Iraqi Constitution promises respect for worker rights, foremost freedom of association and calls upon the Iraqi government to enact a law that guarantees the right to form unions; and

WHEREAS, Iraq is also a 1962 signatory to ILO Convention 98 on the right to organize and collectively bargain (which, ironically, the United States has yet to ratify), thereby also imposing a treaty obligation under international law to respect worker rights; and

WHEREAS, the ILO assisted the Iraqi government to draft a basic labor law that conforms to the requirements of the Iraqi constitution and international norms for respect of labor rights and yet the Iraqi government has refused to present that law to the Parliament for adoption; and

WHEREAS, these transgressions of fundamental labor and human rights have taken place for more than six years without a word of criticism from the U.S.  government to Iraqi authorities and it is long past time for the U.S.  government to speak up for the rights of Iraqi workers and unions; and

WHEREAS, respect for and enforcement of labor rights anywhere encourages respect for and enforcement of labor rights everywhere, including in the United States;

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the AFL-CIO adopt this resolution and urge the U.S.  government to strongly call upon the Iraqi government to live up to the terms of its own constitution and international treaty obligations by:

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the AFL-CIO shall send a copy of this resolution to the U.S. government through Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, with an additional copy to the Iraqi government through its embassy in Washington, D.C.; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the AFL-CIO urge its state and area labor federations and central labor councils to concur with this resolution and communicate that concurrence to the U.S. government by notice to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the Iraqi government through its embassy in Washington, D.C.; and

BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED, that the AFL-CIO shall participate in the campaign for labor rights in Iraq by circulating the petition in support of those rights initiated by U.S. Labor Against the War.

RESOLUTION 52

Bring All the Troops and Contractors Home!

Submitted by Alameda Labor Council (Calif.)
Amended by the International Labor Committee

WHEREAS, the 2005 AFL-CIO convention resolved that “Our soldiers…deserve a commitment from our country’s leaders to bring them home rapidly.  An unending military presence will waste lives and resources, undermine our nation’s security and weaken our military;” and

WHEREAS, at the time of that convention, 1,700 U.S.  troops had already lost their lives in Iraq, and today there are more than 4,300 U.S.  dead and more than 30,000 seriously wounded; and

WHEREAS, the nation confronts the most serious economic crisis since the Great Depression and as a consequence millions of workers have lost their jobs or suffered cuts in working hours and wages, social programs and government services are being cut or eliminated across the country for lack of resources while our country has spent $650 billion in Iraq already and nearly $900 billion since 2001, including Afghanistan; and

WHEREAS, under terms of the Status of Forces Agreement signed by the Bush administration, U.S.  forces will remain in Iraq until the end of
2011, and will continue to engage in combat and suffer casualties as long as they remain in that country; and

WHEREAS, in March 2008, Barack Obama said, “It is past time to end this war that should never have been waged by bringing our troops home, and finally pushing Iraq’s leaders to take responsibility for their future.  As we do, we must serve the memory of all who have died as well as they who served our country, by providing support for their families, caring for our troops and veterans and upholding the American values which our fallen heroes exemplified through their service”; and

WHEREAS, at its 2005 convention, the AFL-CIO called for “rapid” withdrawal from Iraq—and four years later, 130,000 troops and 190,000 contractors are still in Iraq;

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the Alameda County Labor Council reaffirms its opposition to the continuing military occupation of Iraq and calls for the speedy* withdrawal of all military forces and armed contractors from Iraq; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the Alameda County Labor Council calls upon the Congress and president to redirect the resources now squandered in Iraq to meeting the urgent needs of the American people, restoring and fully funding vital social programs and public services, developing sustainable technologies to address global warming, creating quality long-term jobs that provide a decent living, rebuilding the Gulf Coast and our nation’s infrastructure and a host of other needs that will provide our country with real security; and