March to end the war

Over 200 people marched Saturday, Oct. 7, from Lake and Hennepin to Loring Park to protest the continued war in Afghanistan.
Steve Clemens of Vets for Peace made the following remarks at the beginning of the march:

I stand before you today more in sadness than anger—although I have some of both.

Photo by Kim DeFranco

My anger, however, is less directed at President Obama than at the system where most of our political leaders are (willingly) trapped: a system of hegemony and domination supported by a military system which is more predatory than protective. Our political leaders like to think they are “protecting the American Way of Life” when, in reality, they are promoting a predatory system of corporate domination which seeks to continue the profligate pattern of American overconsumption protected at gunpoint.

I had the distinct privilege of traveling to Afghanistan a year ago as part of an international peace team led by Kathy Kelly of Voices For Creative Nonviolence. In Kabul we met with young Afghans who are committed to nonviolent solutions in their homeland. The Afghan Peace Volunteers are true nationalists who don’t want their beloved land “occupied by either U.S. and NATO forces or the oppressive, fundamentalism of the Taliban.”

We should have no illusions about the brutish misogyny and thuggish rigidity of the Taliban—but we must also understand the U.S./NATO complicity with equally repressive warlords who were bribed with millions of our taxpayer dollars to help overthrow the Taliban when the U. S. handed over truckloads of crisp $100 dollar bills to warlords 11 years ago this week to buy their loyalty, cooperation, and combat capability. We directly fed the rampant culture of corruption that now so clearly has infected all of Afghan society.

We also empowered the system of tribal warlords who continue to try to keep most of Afghanistan back in the 15th century when it comes to the rights of women and girls. Our secretary of state as well as a couple of her predecessors, Condi Rice and Madeline Albright, have used the battle-cry of “women’s rights” as a call to support the present U.S. occupation of Afghanistan. But, as my friend Chante Wolf of Veterans For Peace and others have so clearly observed, looking to the U.S. Military to defend the rights of women is beyond ironic and is rather full-fledged hypocrisy. The incidence of sexual harassment, abuse and assault within the U.S. Military of it’s own women soldiers is frighteningly horrendous, and such a system, based on fear, authority and domination, cannot be expected to model human rights for anyone—let alone others who speak a different language, practice a different religion and have very different cultural mores and practices.

I have no illusions as I march in these streets that President Obama will listen to us. He has already weighed his political options and doesn’t want to appear to be “soft” on defense against terrorism. He has decided to double-down on the use of un-manned aerial vehicles, drones with the names of Predator and Reaper, machines which rain destruction from on high, so fewer American troops come home in body-bags. His policy has made all Afghan and Pakistani males between the ages of 15 and 45 “militants” for whom he has granted himself the right to “kill-on-sight.” When they are killed by Apache helicopters, bombers or drones, they are no longer classified as “collateral damage”—civilians killed by accident in a war-zone—because they have already been redefined by the Pentagon as combatants because of their gender and age.

But I can personally assure you that although they fall within that gender/age range, my new friends Abdulai, Ali, Amer Shah, Basir, Ghulmai, Mohammed Jan, Asif and others should not be targets of our weapons but fellow collaborators for peace and justice. Sharbanoo, Zahra, Lena and other Afghan women I met are not looking for continued American occupation of their country in the name of their rights but also want that occupation to end NOW.

I wrote to my friends in Afghanistan and asked them what they would like to say to you today. Here is what the Afghan Peace Volunteers sent me:

“After 11 years of the U.S./NATO war in Afghanistan, and the three decades of war before that, we are very tired of the killings.

“This war cannot stop the war.”

Afghans have a saying that ‘blood cannot wash away blood’ and we’ve witnessed and experienced its truth, daily. The U.S. has lost 2,000 of its soldiers. Afghans have lost at least 2 million loved ones over the past four decades of war.
Stop. Stop the killings. Stop the mutual bloodshed. Stop spending 2 billion U.S. dollars a week just on killing. Stop the drones. Stop the use of depleted uranium. Stop.

I’ll be marching with both sadness and anger—but also with the intent to engage my fellow Minnesotans in conversation urging both truth-telling and a new direction for our foreign policy. I’d rather carry a candle to shed some light and hope rather than just curse the darkness of our present policies.

Silence isn’t an option.