Colorado Citizens for Peace

Expanding War in Afghanistan

Six years after it started, the American war in Afghanistan is getting more violent and bigger. Meanwhile, the United States continues its military occupation of Iraq.

You can help communicate the need for peace by attending our Saturday vigil.

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Colorado Citizens for Peace

Weekly Vigil

Every Saturday

Noon - 1:00 p.m.

Intersection of Wadsworth Blvd. and 52nd Ave.

Arvada, Colorado
MAP

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No Cap on Troops for Afghanistan | The Age (Australia)

America's military chief has flagged the possibility of sending more US troops to Afghanistan on top of 68,000 approved by the Obama Administration, warning that Americans should brace for more US casualties.

Over the past fortnight there has been speculation that there is an unofficial ceiling on the US commitment of troops to Afghanistan, after National Security Adviser General Jim Jones was reported as telling commanders in Afghanistan that President Barack Obama was likely to react badly to a troop request.

But Admiral Mike Mullen has denied there is a cap on the US commitment in Afghanistan, which was identified by President Obama as a priority.

"There is not a ceiling on troop levels," Admiral Mullen, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a speech to the Centre for Strategic and International Studies on Tuesday.

Admiral Mullen said US General Stanley McChrystal, the recently appointed commander of international forces in Afghanistan, now had all the troops his predecessor had asked for and had been given 60 days to come back with his own assessment of what was needed.

"In the interim he will come back with his assessment and my guidance to him is: 'You tell me what you need, bring it back to Washington and we'll take it from there.' "

But Admiral Mullen also said it was incumbent on the commanders to make sure that every US serviceman in Afghanistan was needed and he foreshadowed that there would be higher casualties in the tough and potentially long fight ahead in Afghanistan.

The deaths of seven US soldiers on Monday were "an indication of expectations that I've had for some time that this fight is going to be tough", he said. "It's going to get tougher before it gets easier."

Admiral Mullen also appeared to qualify last week's estimate that the operations in the southern Helmand province would last weeks, not months, saying on Tuesday: "It's just a beginning and we actually don't know."

He also agreed with the former US ambassador to Afghanistan, Ron Neuman, that Afghanistan posed extra challenges because there was only about a third the number of local security forces compared to the numbers in Iraq — raising questions about holding territory claimed from the Taliban, and the US's longer-term exit strategy.

Admiral Mullen said there were 80,000 in the Afghan army, with authorisation to go to 134,000. But he said that "134,000 might not be right".

The US had reached its goal of 82,000 police, he said, but the "challenge was the quality and training and getting them out there through Afghanistan."

At the time of the US surge in Iraq in 2008, the security forces numbered 600,000.

Afghanistan is a bigger and slightly more populous country than Iraq, with more challenging terrain. Total security force numbers, including NATO, local army and police, total 260,000.

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One-Day Afghan Death Toll of U.S. Troops Hits 7 | Los Angeles Times - June 6, 2009

Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan, and Washington -- On the day of the largest one-day death toll in months for U.S. troops in Afghanistan, military officials and experts warned that the American public should brace for rising casualties as thousands of additional American troops pour into the region to confront a resurgent Taliban.

So far this year 73 American troops have died in Afghanistan, including seven on Monday, according to the U.S. military. At the current rate, 2009 would be the deadliest for the U.S. in more than seven years of fighting, surpassing the 132 killed last year, the military said.

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Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan: Killed and Wounded
iCasualties.org

Cost of War Goes On

Grim Milestone: 5,000 GIs Dead in Iraq, Afghanistan Wars | Antiwar.com

Among the six U.S. servicemember deaths so far reported in June, one soldier has become the 5,000th casualty of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to Icasualties.org the wars have cost at least 4,308 lives in Iraq and 695 in Afghanistan. The official count from the Department of Defense, however, has the total number of deaths at 4,996 in both military campaigns. The D.O.D. figures often lag slightly behind those reported in the mass media.

These figures include both combat and non-combat deaths, as well as those servicemembers killed outside the main theaters of action. In some cases, however, a servicemember who may have died months or years later of wounds received during service might not be included in official figures.

Military Families Speak Out noted the milestone in a press release published today. The antiwar group, which was formed by military families in 2002, asked President Obama to swiftly end the wars, as promised during last year’s presidential campaign. However, as the U.S. Congress returned from a weeklong Memorial Day break yesterday, the lawmakers’ main war concern was not ending either campaign, but in finalizing a new war funding bill for the president to sign.

President Obama originally asked for $84.3-billion to continue the wars. Both chambers then added their own items, bringing the final tally for the House to $96.7-billion and the Senate’s to $91.3-billion in additional funding.

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Colorado Citizens for Peace

Weekly Vigil

Every Saturday

Noon - 1:00 p.m.

Intersection of Wadsworth Blvd. and 52nd Ave.

Arvada, Colorado
MAP

U.S. House Approves Blank Check for Wars

ATTENTION!

The United States military occupation of Iraq is not over. It is more important than ever keep the pressure on our elected leaders in Washington to end this immoral and illegal war.

Vote of Colorado delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives on funding for Iraq and Afghanistan wars, May 14, 2009. (Thomas)

Perlmutter - YES
DeGette - YES
Salazar - YES
Markey - YES
Lamborn - YES
Coffman - YES
Polis - NO

House Backs Obama's Afghan Surge, Amid Calls for Exit Strategy | John Nichol/The Nation/CommonDreams.org

"Sometimes great presidents make mistakes," declared Massachusetts Congressman Jim McGovern as he announced his intention to vote against $97 billion in "emergency" supplemental funding for the continued U.S. occupation of Iraq and President Obama's dangerously misguided plan to surge 21,000 more U.S. troops and trainers into Afghanistan.

McGovern is a Democrat who supported Barack Obama for president last year.

But McGovern is not willing to write Obama a blank check for endless warmaking.

And he is not alone.

The congressman was one of five dozen House members who voted Thursday against the "emergency" supplemental, which passed the House on a 368-60 vote. Of the 60 "no" votes, 51 came from Democrats, almost all of them members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Nine Republicans, some of them anti-war, some of them budget hawks, voted "no."

The level of Democratic opposition was significant and reflected concerns that were summed up by McGovern.

"The mission has greatly expanded and the policy is vague," the Massachusetts congressman explained Thursday. "The more stuff I'm exposed to the more uneasy I get about what we're doing here. I get this sinking feeling that we're getting sucked into something that we'll never be able to get out of." ... MORE

Important to Keep Pressure on Obama

It is more important than ever to keep the pressure on President Obama to stick to the goal of extricating the U.S. military out of the quagmire of Iraq.

Make your desire for peace known by attending the peace vigil next Saturday.

Iraq Bloodshed Rises as US Allies Defect | Times of London

Iraq is threatened by a new wave of sectarian violence as members of the “Sons of Iraq” – the Sunni Awakening militias that were paid by the US to fight Al-Qaeda – begin to rejoin the insurgency.

If the spike in violence continues, it could affect President Barack Obama’s pledge to withdraw all combat troops from Iraqi cities by the end of June. All US troops are due to leave the country by 2012.

A leading member of the Political Council of Iraqi Resistance, which represents six Sunni militant groups, said: “The resistance has now returned to the field and is intensifying its attacks against the enemy. The number of coalition forces killed is on the rise.”

The increase in attacks by such groups, combined with a spate of bombings blamed on Al-Qaeda, has had a chilling effect on the streets of Iraq. More than 370 Iraqi civilians and military – and 80 Iranian pilgrims – lost their lives in April, making it the bloodiest month since last September. On Wednesday, five car bombs exploded in a crowded market in Sadr City, Baghdad, killing 51 people and injuring 76. Three US soldiers were killed on Thursday and two more yesterday when a gunman in Iraqi army uniform opened fire near Mosul. ...

... Many fighters have abandoned their security posts, allowing militant groups to fill the gap. Abu Omar, the leader of an Awakening militia in northern Baghdad, said more than 50 out of 175 fighters had quit.

The Iraqi resistance representative claimed some militias had lost even more. “Up to half their members have resigned from the Awakening and rejoined the resistance,” he said.

The US had been paying nearly 100,000 Sons of Iraq to participate in its security “surge”, but handed over responsibility for their welfare to the Iraqi government last month. Their pay has since dried up. Only 5,000 members of the Awakening have been employed by the Iraqi security forces.

Ginger Cruz, America’s deputy inspector-general for Iraq reconstruction, warned that disillusioned Sunnis could join forces with Al-Qaeda as well as resistance groups. ...

... Many Iraqis believe deteriorating security may provide a pretext for the US to prolong its stay in Iraq.

Colonel Andrew Bacevich, a military historian who lost his son in Iraq, said the rise in casualties threatened Obama’s withdrawal plans. The US military, including General Jim Jones, Obama’s national security adviser, wanted troops to leave the country “in a condition in which they can plausibly claim to have achieved success”, he said.

Iraq has already begun negotiating with the United States about exceptions to the June 30 deadline, according to press reports. MORE

May Meeting

Join us for an organizational meeting immediately following the vigil on Saturday, May 2, 2009. We will gather at the adjacent Lone Star restaurant at one o'clock for about 45 minutes.

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Colorado Citizens for Peace

Weekly Vigil

Every Saturday

Noon - 1:00 p.m.

Intersection of Wadsworth Blvd. and 52nd Ave.

Arvada, Colorado
MAP

The U.S. War in Afghanistan

Top Ten Ways the US is Turning Afghanistan into Iraq | Juan Cole/Informed Comment

1. Exaggerating the threat. An Afghan army foot patrol was attacked by guerrillas in Helmand Province on Wednesday, according to AP. US and Afghan soldiers responded, engaging in a firefight. Then the US military called in an air strike on the Taliban, killing 20 of them. On Tuesday, a similar airstrike had taken out 30 guerrillas.

It is this sort of thing that makes me wonder why the Taliban (or whoever these guys in Helmand were) are considered such a big threat that the full might of NATO is needed to deal with them. They have no air force, no artillery, no tanks. They are just small bands, apparently operating in platoons, who, whenever they mass in large enough numbers to stand and fight, can just be turned into red mist from the air.

2. The US has actually only managed to install a fundamentalist government in Afghanistan, which is rolling back rights of women and prosecuting blasphemy cases. In a play for the Shiite vote (22% or so of the population), President Hamid Karzai put through civilly legislated Shiite personal status law, which affects Shiite women in that country. The wife will need the husband's permission to go out of the house, and can't refuse a demand for sex. (Since the 1990s there has been a movement in 50 or more countries to abandon the idea that spouses cannot rape one another, though admittedly this idea is new and was rejected in US law until recently).

No one seems to have noted that the Shiite regime in Baghdad is more or less doing the same thing. In Iraq, the US switched out the secular Baath Party for Shiite fundamentalist parties. Everyone keeps saying the US improved the status of women in both countries. Actually, in Iraq the US invasion set women back about 30 years. In Afghanistan, the socialist government of the 1980s, for all its brutality in other spheres, did implement policies substantially improving women's rights, including aiming at universal education, making a place for them in the professions, and so forth. There were socialist Afghan women soldiers fighting the Muslim fundamentalist guerrillas that Reagan called "freedom fighters" and to whom he gave billions to turn the country into a conservative theocracy. I can never get American audiences to concede that Afghan women had it way better in the 1980s, and that it has been downhill ever since, mainly because of US favoritism toward patriarchal and anti-progressive forces.

3. The US is building a mass of hardened bases costing over $1 bn. in Afghanistan. That's about the annual budget of the Afghanistan government.

4. It begins. The US is creating local militias in Wardak called the Afghan Public Protection Force. You wonder how long it will be before the Karzai government is engaged in firefights with them (cf. Fadl in Baghdad earlier this week).

5. Now thousands of private security contractors (i.e. mercenaries) will be hired in Afghanistan. But they won't be Americans for the most part. Children, can you say "Hessians"?

I don't understand the concept of paying someone $200,000 a year to guard armed GIs being paid a fraction of that. Wouldn't it be better to expand the size of the army if you need more troops? Wouldn't it be more efficient to have one line of command? Aren't these essentially high-priced MPs?

6. The secretary of defense is predicting that the US military will be in Afghanistan indefinitely and will only achieve limited goals there. (!)

I ask myself, "why?"

7. An attempt by officials in the Obama administration to replace Guantanamo with Bagram in Afghanistan has been shot down by a Federal judge. The government actually argued that the three men (2 Yemenis and a Tunisian) did not have habaeus corpus rights because they are in a war zone.

Why are they in a war zone? Because the US government transported them there!

8. The president is corralling a coalition of the reluctant for troop contributions in Afghanistan.

9. While militaries spend tens of billions on fighting disgruntled Pashtun tribesmen, a fifth of pregnant women or women with newborns are malnourished in Afghanistan. In Iraq, as well, public health crises took a back seat while hundreds of billions were spent on weapons and warfare.

10. A new Friedman unit. It was always the "next six months" that would be "crucial" for Iraq. It is now "this year" that is crucial for Afghanistan. By the math of Friedman units, does this mean the Afghanistan occupation will last twice as long as the Iraq one?

Juan R. I. Cole is Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. For three decades, he has sought to put the relationship of the West and the Muslim world in historical context. His most recent book is Engaging the Muslim World (Palgrave Macmillan, March, 2009) and he also recently authored Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). He has been a regular guest on PBS's Lehrer News Hour, and has also appeared on ABC Nightly News, Nightline, the Today Show, Charlie Rose, Anderson Cooper 360, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Democracy Now! and many others. He has also given many radio and press interviews. He has written extensively about Egypt, Iran, Iraq, and South Asia. He has commented extensively on the Iraq War, the politics of Pakistan and Afghanistan, and the increasing conflict with Iran.

Starting Seven Years of War

Commemorating six years since George W. Bush ordered the unprovoked attack, invasion and military occupation of Iraq.

Year seven of this misadventure begins with over a hundred thousands U.S. troops still occupying Iraq.

We must never forget that we were lied into this war ... and we should never forget the thousands of GIs and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis that have died because of those lies.

Six Years Later, Iraq Lessons Still Unheeded | Alexia Gilmore/Mercury News

The most successful war seldom pays for its losses. — Thomas Jefferson

On March 19, 2003, in the aftermath of Sept. 11, the United States launched the Iraq war. Today, six years, hundreds of thousands of military and civilian deaths and $600 billion later, President Barack Obama is telling us the United States is beginning its departure.

But what is waiting in the wings so clearly — so painfully — is the escalation of the Afghanistan/Pakistan crisis. The Obama administration will push this escalation, just as President Bush pushed Iraq. Such is the purview of the party in power. So, let us reflect on Iraq as a prequel to what surely is pending in this next theater of conflict.

Not only has the Iraq war failed to accomplish any meaningful goals when compared to its human and financial costs, it has steeled the resolve of terrorists and other enemies of the United States. In that sense, the war has compromised our security, not protected it.

The public was led down the garden path to justify the Iraq war, as a result of emotion and false information in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Powerful interests and the agendas of government and certain industries also played a central role.

Smaller-scale terrorist attacks had been occurring in Europe, Asia and South America for decades, and the United States had very strong indications that an attack could come to its territory.

However, the country had not effectively retooled from the Cold War and had no real, on-the-ground understanding of the Middle East, or an infrastructure to manage issues and threats facing us. This was very apparent post-Sept. 11, when the country learned that important intelligence was either not pieced together or even translated in a timely manner.

In a broader sense, the United States still has not awakened to the implications of the post-Cold War world of globalism and the multiplicity of dangerous, vying powers.

The country is still in the position of a "nation of trust," held to a higher standard by virtue of its espoused positions about liberty, fairness, equality, democracy and other qualities. This leaves the United States subject to greater criticism when it fails. Looked at rationally, the war on terror is a war of attitudes and nerves. Do we believe in and stand by our values, or do we panic and invade in ill-planned, ill-conceived ways?

Another major lesson of the Iraq war is that it has been a counterproductive foreign policy tool. Our ability to effect positive change through peaceful, collaborative means — traditionally a strength of the United States — has suffered tremendous damage.

We hold important principles — those of the Founding Fathers, by and large —— that the nation should not use warfare as its main tool in engaging with the rest of the world. However, America has involved its armed services in more than 230 conflicts or potential conflicts since our founding, so we have not practiced these principles.

As we confront complex problems in interacting with the rest of the world, we must eliminate wars from the landscape.

Alexia Gilmore of Palo Alto is executive director of Antiwar.com, the largest organization of its kind dedicated to eliminating interventionism around the world.

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Colorado Citizens for Peace

Weekly Vigil

Every Saturday

Noon - 1:00 p.m.

Intersection of Wadsworth Blvd. and 52nd Ave.

Arvada, Colorado
MAP

Colorado Citizens for Peace - Four Year Vigil for Peace

Saturday, February 21, 2009, marked four years the vigil for peace at 52nd Avenue and Wadsworth Boulevard in Arvada, Colorado, has taken place. Meeting every Saturday from noon until 1:00 P.M., patriotic citizens have gathered to protest the unprovoked, illegal U.S. attack, invasion and occupation of Iraq.

All participants expressed the hope and prayer that there will not be the need to return for a fifth such commemoration. All people of goodwill are heartily invited to join Colorado Citizens for peace every Saturday.

During the course of the hour, approximately sixty people attended the street corner anniversary vigil. About thirty participants met afterwards at the Lone Star restaurant to hear music and listen to a guest speaker discuss the present situation in Iraq and the Middle East.

As many as 60 people lined Wadsworth Blvd. to promote peace
and an end to the U.S. occupation of Iraq.








Gathering at the Lone Star for camaraderie and refreshment.


Music by Kevin Alumbaugh and Scott Zulauf.


The 'Raging Grannies' sing for peace and progress.


Cindy Lowry reads a poetic original composition.


Inman Kazerooni, keynote speaker, delivers remarks
on the situations in Iraq, Iran, Palestine and the Middle East.
Photographs by Dave Chandler

Vigil Anniversary In February

The war in Iraq has been going on for six years this March -- Colorado Citizens for Peace have been meeting every Saturday for peace for four years.

Join us on the anniversary of our commitment to peace and an end of the war and U.S. military occupation of Iraq.

Saturday, February 21, 2009

Noon - 2:00 p.m.

Intersection of Wadsworth Blvd. and 52nd Ave.

Arvada, Colorado

MAP

We will have our regular peace vigil from Noon until 1:00 P.M., then have the rally next door at Lone Star restaurant in the Alamo Room; folks can order lunch if they chose.

Keynote Speaker
Inman Kazerooni

Also Appearing
Raging Grannies

Egg Planet -- Music

Cindy Lowry -- Poetry

Non-Violence Training a Success

Cindy Lowry reports:

"The non-violent training (conducted on Saturday, January 24) was a really success -- there were almost twenty persons in attendance. It was one of the best non-violent training we have had to date -- we actually should have had a couple more hours to explore the topic."