Hudson: "Brown Bag Lunch Vigil for Healthcare Not Warfare" at office of Rep. Scott Murphy
Date : 17 March 2010
From : 12:00pm
To : 1:00pm
Category : Peace / War
Location : 12534
Event Description :
A recurring vigil in front of Rep. Scott Murphy's office, demanding "Healthcare Not Warfare". The group plans to meet every third Wednesday of the month until all of the US troops come home from Afghanistan and Iraq.
Note that this event was originally listed in error, as occurring on March 10th.
There is also a carpool from Dutchess County that meets at 11 am in front of the Rhinebeck Town Hall at 80 E Market St.
The organizers ask participants to bring signs, flyers, and "your determination to stop funding wars," and to come each month. The organizers also suggest calling Congress at 800 828-0498.
There are Healthcare Not Warfare and customizable BBLV fliers available at the Progressive Democrats of America website - http://www.PDAmerica.org
Contact: 845 242-3571, or via the email address below.
Sponsored by: Real Majority Project, Progressive Democrats of America.
Statements from the organizer:
Fact: The taxpayers of Dutchess County alone have spent $1.2 billion on war in Afghanistan/Iraq since 2001, and the taxpayers of the U.S. are now spending $4 billion a month on war in Afghanistan alone according to the National Priorities Project (see http://www.NationalPriorities.org ).
It will be a while, the US military tells us, before the success or failure of its Afghan offensive in Marja can be determined with any certainty. That says it all: a superpower will require weeks to seize control of just a single town in a vast country of thousands of villages and valleys.
Centcom commander Gen. David Petraeus calls the Marja action "just the initial operation of what will be a twelve- to eighteen-month campaign" aimed at wresting power from the Taliban. It's fair to ask, of course, Isn't that what they have been trying to do for eight long years?
The Obama administration says that this time it's different--that the addition of 30,000 troops to the long-running conflict will turn the tide against the Taliban. The surge, Obama's advisers have long argued, will reverse the insurgents' momentum and persuade the Taliban's foot soldiers, and perhaps some of their leaders, to come to the bargaining table. General Petraeus tells us to expect high casualties among US and NATO forces.
Leave aside, for a moment, the problem that adding US forces creates more enemies, not fewer (dozens of civilians have been killed in recent US airstrikes, further enraging the Afghan public). The fact is, clearing, holding and building new social and political structures in Afghanistan, village by village and valley by valley, will take many years, if it can be done at all. Stretching ahead is a decades-long nation-building project that can't be sustained politically, militarily or financially.
As we go to press, the US death toll is nearing 1,000. More than 600 NATO troops have died in a conflict that is increasingly opposed in Europe and straining the alliance; indeed, the Dutch government recently collapsed because of widespread antiwar sentiment. More than eight years into the war, neither the Afghan army nor the police are very functional. The warlord-ridden, corrupt government of President Karzai, returned to power last year after a rigged vote, has little credibility. And Afghanistan's primitive economy, heavily dependent on the drug industry, will be troubled for decades. (One development to watch is the possibility that Pakistan, after decades of fostering, arming and training the Taliban, may be coming around. In recent weeks Pakistan has helped nab several insurgent leaders and shadow governors, and it appears that it is snatching up Taliban by the hundreds fleeing across the Afghan border.)
For Marja to be of any lasting significance, it must be followed quickly by a political settlement, regional diplomacy and implementation of effective Afghan governance. Otherwise, it will merely be a fleeting counterinsurgency footprint wiped away before long by a returning Taliban tide--and thus a testament to the futile sacrifice of American lives and resources for an ill-defined goal of the administration's Af-Pak strategy.
All of this should be fertile territory for exploration in hearings on Capitol Hill. At the height of the war in Iraq, Democrats hectored President Bush with the question, What's your exit strategy? It's time for Congress to ask Obama the same question. March promises to bring a revival of peace activism. Progressive Democrats of America has launched a "Healthcare Not Warfare" campaign, and, joined by Code Pink and other groups, it has started a "Brown Bag Lunch Vigil" at Congressional offices across the country to educate politicians and the public about the costs of war. A revived US antiwar movement that unites with the growing one in Europe would be a powerful force for a negotiated solution and a drawdown of forces.
Progressive Democrats of America expands the Healthcare NOT Warfare campaign to include Brown Bag Lunch Vigils.
As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. observed over 40 years ago, "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death," and "of all the forms of inequality, injustice in healthcare is the most shocking and inhumane."
As the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq labor on with no end in sight, it's become alarmingly clear that they have exacted a staggering human and financial toll on the Iraqi, Afghan, and American people.
In light of this sad state, Progressive Democrats of America is extending and expanding the Healthcare NOT Warfare campaign to raise awareness among the public and our elected officials that the electorate is not being served by current U.S. policies. We demand an end to the unjust and illegitimate wars against, and occupations of, Afghanistan and Iraq.
PDA's Brown Bag Lunch Vigil Campaign is calling on our members, and like-minded individuals and organizations, to gather on the third Wednesday of every month in front of-and in-congressional offices in districts across the country.
PDA and our allies call on President Obama and Congress to support HR 2404 and HR 3699, and to establish improved and expanded Medicare for All to residents of the United States. We cannot let them forget that we are watching and waiting for the next election.
"Kucinich Forces Congress to Debate Afghanistan" by Robert Naiman, published on Friday, March 5, 2010
On Thursday, Ohio Representative Dennis Kucinich introduced H. Con Res. 248, a privileged resolution with 16 original cosponsors that will require the House of Representatives to debate whether to continue the war in Afghanistan. Debate on the resolution is expected early next week.
Original cosponsors of the Kucinich resolution include John Conyers, Ron Paul, José Serrano, Bob Filner, Lynn Woolsey, Walter Jones, Danny Davis, Barbara Lee, Michael Capuano, Raúl Grijalva, Tammy Baldwin, Tim Johnson, Yvette Clarke, Eric Massa, Alan Grayson, and Chellie Pingree.
The Pentagon doesn't want Congress to debate Afghanistan. The Pentagon wants Congress to fork over $33 billion more to pay for the current military escalation, no questions asked, no restrictions imposed for a withdrawal timetable or an exit strategy.
Ideally, from the point of view of the Pentagon, Congress would fork over that money right away, before the coming Kandahar offensive that the $33 billion is supposed to pay for, because you can expect a lot of bad news out of Afghanistan in the form of deaths of American soldiers and Afghan civilians once the Kandahar offensive starts, and it would sure be awkward if all that bad news reached Washington while the $33 billion was hanging fire.
So it's a great thing that Rep. Kucinich and his 16 allies are forcing Congress to debate the issue, and it would be even better if more Members of Congress would be urged by their constituents to support Kucinich's resolution. That would be a signal to the House leadership that continuation of the open-ended war and occupation is controversial in the House, and the House leadership should not try to ram through $33 billion more for the war on a fast-track without ample opportunity for debate and amendment.
Every day the Afghanistan war continues is another day on which the United States Government plays Russian Roulette with the lives of American soldiers and Afghan civilians.
The British Government has more urgency than the U.S. government about ending the war - and is more supportive than the U.S. of a political solution to end the conflict - because in Britain there is greater public outcry.
If there were greater public and Congressional outcry in the U.S., we could be more like Britain, and get our government on board the train to a political solution, instead of prolonging the war indefinitely.
The first step towards bringing our troops home is for Members of Congress to hear from their constituents.
Robert Naiman is Policy Director at Just Foreign Policy.
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