Forty two years ago, Martin Luther King joined his voice with the opponents of the American War against Vietnam and called for a breaking of the silence and a raising of voices against the war. Today we hear few voices speaking out, speaking against the escalation of the American War in Afghanistan. It is time, past time, to break this silence.

At the core of Rev. King’s speech is his call for a “true revolution” ,

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. …

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. …

A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

Rev. King’s message remains relevant, his call sadly still in need of our response.

Today we continue to occupy Iraq– and now with the Obama administration’s strategy for the war on Afghanistan, we are diving deeper into the quagmire – and expanding to Pakistan.

We see the growing distress of Afghans – both in their own coutnry where they face a growing threat from military actions and in those who flee including the 24 unaccompanied children found living in an Italian railway station this week and news of more and more women fleeing the country.

While presented as a new and more sensible approach to Afghanistan, once again we are planning a surge with no exit plan and a continued lack of concern for the most basic protection of the civilians in the land we claim to liberate.

Just last week, eleven humanitarian organizations called on the US and our allies to institute new policies to counteract the increase in danger to civilians which will follow the escalation.

Instead of listening to these experts, the administration seems determined to continue the failed policies of the past including the militarization of humanitarian aid which is presented as a balance to the increased deployment of US forces but which actually increases the suffering of Afghans:

The report warns the military are blurring the distinction between aid workers and soldiers by doing extensive humanitarian and assistance work for counter-insurgency purposes, and by using unmarked white vehicles, which are conventionally only used by the UN and aid agencies. This undermines local perceptions of the independence and impartiality of aid agencies and therefore increases the risk to aid workers, and threatens to reduce the areas in which they can safely work.

The agencies also warn that the increasing distortion of humanitarian and development assistance for military aims could undermine long-term stability.

Agencies say that the Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs), the military-led security and reconstruction teams, continue to receive massive amounts of funding: the annual PRT budget for the United States – over $200 million – exceeds the Afghan national budgets for health and education combined. The agencies recommend a phase-out of militarised aid and a substantial increase in development and humanitarian funding for civilian institutions and organisations.

This is just one part of what is so wrong with the new plan for Afghanistan. Today, as part of Get Afghanistan Right’s campaign, you can raise the issues that concern you about the escalation in diaries at Oxdown. GAR will be collecting and publicizing the diaries so the policymakers in Washington know that we are insisting on a genuinely new approach.

Forty two years ago, Rev King asked us to hear the voices of those who suffer in our wars – and to raise our voices. Today, we need to hear yours.


Related posts:

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  2. Matthew Hoh on Eikenberry’s Afghanistan Cables: “I’m Not Surprised”
  3. When the Women of Afghanistan Speak, Does Howard Dean Listen?
  4. Afghanistan: Mission Creep in Action
  5. Afghanistan: 21,000 Plus 13,000 – or Plus 115,000?