The Alliance for Peace of the Pioneer Valley sponsored an old-fashioned Vietnam War-era teach-in at the Edwards Church in downtown Northampton this afternoon. It featured three speakers: Michael Klare, Hampshire professor and director of the Five College Program in Peace and World Security Studies, who spoke of what is needed to get people to protest against the War in Afghanistan, Sut Jhally, founder and executive director of the Media Education Foundation in Northampton who focused his remarks on the medias role and the degree to which it is serving the corporate interests that are committed to endless war and Bruce Gagnon, who is spearheading the “BRING THE WAR $$ HOME” campaign in Maine using NATIONAL PRIORITIES PROJECT figures to persuade Mainers that what ails their economy and is causing drastic cutbacks and unemployment is directly connected to war spending. Each of these men offered insights into what is causing our nation to have such difficulty finding a way to end the Afghanistan War as well as suggestions for what could be done to effect change.
We then broke up into 6 focus groups on such topics as campus organizing, the human cost of war, the economic cost of war and the environmental effects. I chose to spend the next hour with the economic costs group, which included Mr. Gagnon and it proved to be a lively session, which included a woman from Easthampton asking Bruce and the rest of us what to say to a friend whose son is in Afghanistan and who doesn’t want to hear about how costly the war is since she fears that spending less money on the war effort could cost him his life.
I could tell the woman who asked the question was not entirely satisfied with the answer Bruce gave about there being many servicemen and women’s families who are opposed to military spending and continuing the war. I approached her after our session ended and asked her if she felt O.K. with the answer that was given and she expressed serious misgivings. I proceeded to go further in an attempt to offer her additional food for thought vis a vis why we need to end the war and how that could increase the likelihood of her friend’s son returning safely and she asked me to write my ideas on my blog so here I am. She and her partner told me they would check out the blog to see what I had to offer. She suggested I make a list of hopefully compelling reasons why her friend’s son would benefit from a decision on our country’s part to withdraw from Afghanistan instead of continuing our occupation of the country. Here they are:
1. Whatever course of action our current administration takes should not be precipitous and therefore would not increase the likelihood of soldiers being underfunded, underequipped or undertrained.
2. If the money the Obama administration is seeking for 30,000 additional troops were not granted it would mean that the money could instead be in the form of an appropriation for an expansion of much needed services for returning veterans many of whom suffer from all sorts of physical and emotional wounds.
3. A decision to de-escalate and eventually end the War in Afghanistan would shorten the length of time to be served in the danger zone that is the entire country and reduce the number of casualties.
4. With the peace dividend that would be available as spending on the war lessened, jobs could be provided for returning soldiers along with the aforementioned services such as counseling to enable returning veterans to have the best possible chance at resuming their civilian lives with as little disruption as possible.
5. Finally, by recognizing that the war is unwinnable and that our presence basically serves to inflame resistance and increase hatred towards us, we would be acknowledging that the soldiers who have been obliged to fight such a war have instead become its victims and it is our country’s responsibility to protect them and to guarantee to the greatest degree possible that they can have satisfying lives that are not at risk either in terms of hurting themselves and those they love or being in harm’s way in Afghanistan.
I hope these responses are helpful. There are surely additional reasons for ending the war to give a parent of a young man or woman serving in Afghanistan or even Iraq. The bottom line is we need to be able to be convincing in our efforts to join with parents whose lives have been deeply affected by having a son or daughter serving in a country that desperately doesn’t want them there. I would greatly appreciate any additional ideas you may have upon reading this.
I’m sure there are other reasons but I think this sums it all up quite well. Thank you for your time and perseverance on this blog, Tom.
Thanks for this post, Tom. My thoughts on the 5 responses:
Although your thoughts about increased vets’ benefits and a potential peace benefit are clearly important, I doubt if they would be very useful in the dilemma faced by the woman to whom you talked: how to discuss de-funding/withdrawal with a mother of a son in Afghanistan.
More important, I think, would be to separate the question into policy and tactics. A policy decision to de-fund, de-escalate, and withdraw from the war could have either positive or negative implications for her son. The tactical decision of how to do this is the one that is relevant–that is your point #1. We would hope that the planners of a withdrawal would not take a path that would increase risk to our soldiers in the process, but would take a path of gradual withdrawal from the periphery to the center (primarily Kabul, I would imagine), with nobody left exposed or under-protected. But it is quite possible that political considerations might work against that. If it is important for the US to not look ‘weak’, to not repeat the debacle of the withdrawal from Vietnam, etc., I could see terrible tactical decisions being made.
Our problem is that we are not military tacticians. But I think that the message of protest has to include the tactical demands that address the safety of our soldiers, the victims you describe in point 5