Obama and Afghanistan

progressive

(Wed, 27 Aug 2008 13:32:29 -0500 (CDT)) --- Institute for Public Accuracy 915 National Press Building, Washington, D.C. 20045
(202) 347-0020 *

www.accuracy.org

ipa@accuracy.org
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Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Obama and Afghanistan

Reuters reports: "The United Nations said on Tuesday it had found
convincing evidence that 90 Afghan civilians, most of them children,
were killed in air strikes by U.S.-led coalition forces in western
Afghanistan last week."

SONALI KOLHATKAR, info@afghanwomensmission.org,

www.afghanwomensmission.org

Co-author of "Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the
Propaganda of Silence," Kolhatkar said today: "The war in Afghanistan is
an issue where the Democratic and Republican candidates are very
similar. The Republicans think the war is going well but they want more
troops. The Democrats think the war is going badly so they want more
troops. And they're both wrong because the same types of problems with
U.S. military strategy in Iraq are occurring in Afghanistan such as
bombs, civilian casualties, detention and torture. On top of that, the
U.S.-backed central government is rife with corruption and is an
additional oppressive force against ordinary people. The media portrays
NATO and the U.S. defending the central government and the people from
the Taliban, but more and more people are seeing the U.S. and NATO as
attacking them. And though they may not like the Taliban, the Taliban's
popularity is slowly increasing."

CHRIS HEDGES, hedgesscoop@aol.com,

www.alternet.org

Hedges wrote the recent piece "Pouring Gas on the Afghanistan
Bonfire," in which he writes: "The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan grind
forward with their terrible human toll, even as ... we prefer to waste
our time on the trivia and gossip ... and do nothing to advance our
understanding of either the campaign or the wars fought in our name.
"As the conflict in Afghanistan has intensified, so has the
indiscriminate use of airstrikes, including Friday's...
"Barack Obama, like John McCain, speaks about Afghanistan in words
that look as if they were penned by the Bush White House. Obama may call
for withdrawing some U.S. troops from Iraq, but he does not want to send
them all home. He wants to send them to Afghanistan, or to what he
obliquely terms 'the right battlefield.' Obama said he would deploy an
additional 10,000 troops to Afghanistan once he took office."
Hedges is co-author of "Collateral Damage: America's War Against
Iraqi Civilians." He worked as the bureau chief in the Middle East and
the Balkans, as well as in other assignments, for the New York Times
from 1990 to 2005.

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

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