U.S. Corporal Gregory S. Stultz, 22, of Brazil, Indiana, died on February 19, 2010 while supporting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan. According to icasualties.org, Stultz’s death marks the grim milestone of 1,000 American soldiers killed in Operation Enduring Freedom.

This week has also been a grim one for civilian casualties as a result of NATO’s Operation Mushtarak in the Marjah district of Helmand and an airstrike in Oruzgan province that killed 27 innocent people. Despite strong denunciations by President Karzai and a steady stream of “I’m sorry’s” from US General Stanley McChrystal, the civilian casualties keep mounting alongside President Obama’s surge in Afghanistan.

The good news is the surge in anti-war sentiment abroad, particularly in NATO countries. The most spectacular case is that of the Netherlands, where the Dutch coalition government collapsed over the issue. A marathon cabinet meeting this weekend ended with the walkout of the second largest party in the government, the Labor Party, which accused the main Christian Democratic Alliance of reversing a 2007 agreement to bring the troops home this year. The Dutch Prime Minister now says that the Dutch will be completely out of Afghanstian by the end of next year.

Public opinion against the war is forcing other governments to consider withdrawal, despite strong pressure from the Obama administration. Canada has announced it will withdraw its 2,800 troops by the end of the year. European countries are struggling to find their share of the 10,000 extra troops requested by General McChrystal to join the 30,000 extra U.S. troops. France has declined to send more forces and the German government is facing fierce opposition at home.

Here in the United States, the debate on the war has been overshadowed by the debate on healthcare and the domestic economy. While progressives have consistently tried to link the two, these ties are increasingly coming from the conservative end of the political spectrum as well. Republican Congressman Ron Paul won the presidential straw poll at the Conservative Progressive Action Committee this weekend on a strong anti-war platform. “The constitution does not give us the authority to be the policemen of the world,” he said to roars of approval from young conservatives. “We spend a trillion dollars a year maintaining an empire, but we’re broke.” His solution? Conserve our taxdollars by practicing diplomacy.

Anti-war sentiments are brewing within the Tea Party as well. Former Arizona Sheriff and Tea Party spokesperson Richard Mack expressed his view on MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews last week. “Both parties have us involved in the war in Iraq and other wars that we shouldn‘t be involved in,” he said. “There‘s no end in sight in this ridiculous war. … It‘s ridiculous.” And conservative commentator Pat Buchanan, talking on with Chris Matthews on Monday, said we had three options for dealing with our gigantic deficit: cut entitlement programs, raise taxes or cut the trillion dollars we spend on maintaining an empire abroad. “That cow is going to be on the chopping block,” he said of the bloated Pentagon budget, and insisted that the anti-war conservatives are growing in strength.

Unfortunately, the anti-war sentiment lacks visibility. Gone are the days when the peace movement could turn out hundreds of thousands of people. The Obama administration not only led to a surge in Afghanistan, but it sucked the air out of the anti-war movement. United for Peace and Justice, once a vibrant coalition of over 1,300 groups with large offices in New York and a dozen staff, has become a network based on volunteers, and grassroots peace groups across the country have folded.

But March promises to be a revival of sorts. The ANSWER coalition is gearing up for the first significant anti-war marches since Obama took office, planned for the March 20 anniversary of the Iraq war. Progressive Democrats of America, along with groups like CODEPINK, have been encouraging people to gather for a brown bag lunch at congressional offices in districts across the country. With the message of Healthcare not Warfare, there are now over a hundred monthly lunches outside congressional offices. And a group called Peace of the Action is organizing a campout on the DC mall starting March 13.

As the fighting surges, the spending on war surges and the deaths surge, it’s time for the U.S. peace movement to regather its energy and push the anti-war agenda back onto the national scene.

Medea Benjamin (medea@globalexchange.org ) is the cofounder of CODEPINK: Women for Peace (www.codepinkalert.org) and Global Exchange (www. globalexchange.org).

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My daughter (15) and I continue to go without health care coverage and live far below the poverty level due to a layoff and unemployment. I am glad you signed the unemployment extension, but MORE MUST BE DONE. We need health insurance!!! We need dental insurance!!! We need increase in income limits for food stamps and benefits in CA!

I have been a hard-working woman for all of my life and gladly paid my taxes to support a country I feel proud to live in. But we need change — the kind of CHANGE you stood for and can stand for again. We need it now … not 2 years… not 4 years… WE NEED IT NOW.

Sincerely,
Deborah Lotus Allen

***

Mr. President,
I absolutely disagree with your Afghanistan troop build-up. When my husband returned from Vietnam he wanted to sleep with me and a gun. When he died, aged 33, no cause of death was found.
The war has come home at Fort Hood and Lakewood and in domestic abuse increases and war does not bring peace.
I cannot imagine how the people of Afghanistan are surviving. War just leads to more war. If war worked, it would have worked by now.
I suggest investing in dipolmacy and development.
-Susu Jeffrey

***

Has anyone asked the Afghan people if they want us to continue killling them? The Taliban are no danger to us. They are not international terrorists. They have pretty much severed their ties with Al Queda and they do not share idealogy or goals with them. They know very well that if they came back into power in Afghanistan, and let al Queda have a haven there again, we would bomb them and invade them again. They are not stupid.
But we are. We keep repeating and repeating the same insanity, with the same empty rationales, over and over again. Everything you said in your speech was bogus. You seem to be as unable to change the machine as anyone else has been, and so you have succumbed to it. You cannot even articulate an honest, realistic description of “the job” “success” “victory” anymore than Bush could, because there is intelligent definition. As long as we are in their country, the Afghans, including the Taliban, will fight us. Not because they are terrorists, but because we are invadors. You know that as well as I do.
It is too sad.
-Friend Rufo

***

MY FAVE:

You were not just elected class president last year, so your obsession with being “most liked” by the most people, over any other consideration of policy, is more than a little obscene.

You have failed the critical test of both a Commander-in-Chief, and of a man: In escalating our eight-year-long military effort to subdue or occupy Afghanistan you have demonstrated neither judgment and integrity nor courage. You have sentenced to death countless Afghans, Americans and others, on our side all duped over and over again by the cynical, high-powered sales pitch attached to our disastrous misadventures in the Middle East, a war which may well be fatal to the republic itself, all to save your political image.
-Arthur Wagner

***

Even though I live in New Jersey, I went to Ohio to campaign for you, in the belief that you would bring a more enlightened foreign policy to America.

I now feel betrayed, and believe that I wasted my time supporting you.
-James Fusco

***

When I heard you repeat the 9/11 mythology on TV my heart sank, because I know you know it’s a lie, but a lie you think you have to pretend to believe and go along with. You are a bitter disappointment, and will only be a footnote in history–another corporate jerk fooling the public to do the banksters will. Sigh.

***

Obama. There’s such a thing as being “too late,” as MLK warned. Be now. Be courage. Be for us. Be not for corporate oil/gas/coal and defense machines. Be a father. Be for children, schools and universities. Be for parks and swimming pools. Be for jobs and living wages and food on the table. Be for roofs overhead and safe streets. Be for renwable energy and clean air. Be for fish and frogs, not poisoned by acid rain and pesticides. Be for children in dirt villages where U.S. tanks roam. Be for stopping cluster bombs. Be for returning Iraqi refugees to their homes. Be not for dominion. Be a peace maker.
-Sharon Rose

***

The warmongers and generals want more war. War is lucrative and profitable. You promised us change and we are still waiting for SOMETHING to change. Guantanamo is still open. Transparency is a myth. The war Iraq is still raging. And now more troops to Afghanistan! If I didn’t know better, I’d think Dick Cheney was still in charge. I am very disappointed.
-James York

***

Anyway, we need this money at home. My husband has been unemployed for over a year and we’d have no health insurance except I have it through a job as a university professor, even though I’m retired and lost over a third of my retirement money in the last year. Still we are far better off than most of my fellow citizens. Take care of our own children, elderly, incapacitated, and the soldiers already wounded in these appalling wars — and don’t get any other U.S. boys and girls hurt!

(Dr.) Sandra E. Drake

***

I am sadden and outraged by your decision to send more of our children to kill other people’s children. There is no military solution to the present situation. Stop the killing and destruction so that we can engage in real nation building where all of humanity will be able to live in peace and nations will learn war no more.
Eve Tetaz
78 years old
Wasington, DC

***

PLEASE LISTEN TO THE WOMEN, THE MOTHERS AND GRANDMOTHERS. THERE IS A KIND OF WISDOM THAT SHOULD WEIGH IN MORE HEAVILY THAN MILITARY ADVICE.
-Connie Hershey

***

Instead of sending 30,000 troops, how about sending 30,000 Peace Corps workers? That would employ some of our own, work on building up the Afghanistan infrastucture (helping create jobs, building schools and hospitals), and maybe the culture would move toward self-sufficiency and have less hatred of us. Fight hate and terrorism with love and constructive help!
-Karen Snyder

***

Our war in the border regions is being fought by drone assassinations. A man at the control sits in front of a screen in Las Vegas, and fires when he has a certain shot. To a primitive mind (but not only to a primitive mind), this experiment on a country not our own has the trappings a video game played in hell. But the procedure was here embraced by the president in the antiseptic idiom of a practiced technocrat. He gave no sign of the effects of such killings by a foreign power out of reach in the sky. To assassinate one major operative, Baitullah Mehsud, as Jane Mayer showed in a recent article in the New Yorker, 16 strikes were necessary, over 14 months, killing a total of as many as 538 persons, of whom 200-300 were bystanders. What comes of the reputation of policemen in a crime-ridden neighborhood when they conduct themselves like that? And what makes anyone suppose the reaction will be less extreme when the policeman comes from another country? And yet, from the president’s West Point speech, one would not guess that he has reflected what our mere presence in West Asia does to increase the enchantment of violent resistance and to heat the anger that turns into terrorists people who have lost parents, children, cousins, clansmen, and friends to the Americans. The total number of Muslims killed by Americans in revenge for the attacks of September 11th now numbers more than a hundred thousand. Of those, few were members of Al Qaeda, and few harbored any intention, for good or ill, toward the United States before we crossed the ocean as an occupying power.
–Brad Martin

***

I am a woman veteran (1957-1968), and I resigned after almost 12 years because of the stupidity of the Vietnam War. Be smart. End the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and (God forbid!) anything we are doing to Pakistan! Keep the peace and spend $2 billion a year NOT on one soldier in Afghanistan, but on health care, energy conservation, renewable energy and job creation. Until then YOU HAVE LOST ME AS A VOTER.
-Anonymous

***

Dear President Obama,

I believe your decision to send more troops to Afghanistan is so misguided, inhuman and immoral that now I regret I voted for you. John McCain could not have done worse. If you do not change course soon, you will be presiding over a bankrupt country with unhappy and unhealthy citizens.

Just think about it. Wouldn’t you rather be a hero?

Ann Marie Saidy

***

Please do not send our children off to die. Woud you ever do the same to yours?
-Catron Booker

***

Mr. Obama, it’s time to earn that Nobel Peace Prize! Bring the troops home NOW and stop the senseless bloodshed!
-Sue Edward

By 2019, the Urban Institute concludes that a single payer health plan would save $20 billion annually based on a projected 6% annual increase in baseline health care cost ($130 billion for single payer vs. over $150 billion for the present system).

In other words, instead of one year of death and destruction, all Americans could enjoy one year of single-payer health coverage. That includes the nearly 45 million people who can’t afford health coverage of any kind, even if the new laws mandate universal purchase of insurance by the very same people who are unable to afford it.

This tradeoff is a stark reminder of the choice either for life or for death. It is probably not going to be offered the American people any time soon, although a recent CNN poll shows that close to 60 percent of the public is now opposed to this war.

The question needs to be raised: Why is this society producing a kind of global toxicity through its foreign policy, when it could equally be espousing a life-affirming position?  Is there something about our national character? Or does public policy have nothing to do with accurately representing the will of the people? Does it only reflect the interests of the people in charge? And who are the people in charge?

The healthcare bill now emerging from committee seems to be a clear giveaway to the health insurance companies. The wars sweeping through Iraq and Afghanistan now threaten to target Pakistan. Among the companies benefiting from the pilotless war in Pakistan are General Atomics, manufacturer of the Predator drone, and Northrop Grumman, manufacturer of the Global Hawk drone. The Predator is the drone that actually drops bombs on targets, while the Global Hawk seems to be for reconnaissance and targeting.

Since WWII, the kill ratio of 10% civilians vs. 90% soldiers has exactly been reversed. The drones have a big role to play in continuing this.

Protesting this War in the Heavens, on September 17, 2009 CODEPINK delivered a petition to the White House and to Senator Harry Reid with over 10,000 signatories, (more to come), which reads in part: “If we do not decide to disengage at once, our dreams of domestic reform will be squandered by years of war budgets. Our dreams of clean energy will be buried in wars over oil and pipelines.…Everything is related now: we cannot afford national health care, housing, and clean energy while spending billions on quagmires across several continents….Our security needs cannot be served by provoking hatred of America caused by repeated invasions of foreign lands.”

As citizens, we have an obligation to do our utmost to push against corporate interests by forcing this administration to reverse its misguided priorities and to truly represent the people who elected it to office. To add your name to this petition, please go to: http://gopetition.com/online/30533.html

Cecile Pineda is the award-wining author of six published novels, all available from Wings Press.com. Visit her web page at http://www.cecilepineda.com

It was an amazing event — every minute, nearly every woman was lying or knelt on the ground stitching together 6,000 knitted squares shipped to DC from women around the world into a 150′ ft. cozy that read, “We will not raise our children to kill another mother’s child.” Then we had a 3 a.m. fashion show, Ben & Jerry’s ice cream pops (um, so amazing), live music from super sassy Melissa Ivey, Iraq Vet Lindsey Campbell and Lizzie West, workshops, yoga…all to honor women worldwide living under occupation.

And our action afterward Sunday afternoon at the Washington Mall, where the U.S. Armed Services had set up hummers, artillerary, and tons of other major weapons for children to explore (ugh??), got some major attention. Check out some mentions in the Washington Post, the Washington City Paper and more here.

From 1 p.m. May 9 through 1 p.m. March 10 in D.C.’s Lafayette Park, CODEPINK and others will host a full schedule of events, including a children’s fair, a “Mothers Say No to War” march around the White House, presentations from women of war-torn countries, teach-ins and workshops Saturday afternoon and a concert by independent rocker Melissa Ivey that evening. On Sunday, CODEPINK will host a powerful interfaith service, creative actions and more. Invited speakers include feminist leader Gloria Steinem, Nobel-winning Iranian human rights activist Shirin Ebadi and retired state official Col. Ann Wright.

“We are witness to the expanding violence around the world, women’s voices are missing, yet they pay the biggest prices,” said Jodie Evans, CODEPINK co-founder. “They lose their children, their home, their family, are abused and left to put it all back together. Still they are not in the decision making, they are not at the negotiating table. We must shed light on this and change it, beginning with this incredibly powerful vigil to honor the call of Mother’s Day.”

The vigil, with co-sponsors including The National Organization of Women (NOW), MADRE, and the Feminist Peace Network, will also include a radical act of knitting, or “knittivism.” Women all over the country submitting knitted squares to be stitched into a banner to stretch over the White House fence that will read, “We will not raise our children to kill another mother’s child.” (See more events in the calendar listed below).

“I truly believe women, organized and mobilized, can be a formidable, powerful force in the movement toward a world free of war,” said Cynthia Benjamin of New York, whose son is serving in Iraq. “To speak truth to power, I’ll join CODEPINK for Mother’s Day to work toward a more just and peaceful planet.”

All festival events are inspired by the original purpose of Mother’s Day, born in 1870 out of abolitionist Julia Ward Howe’s Mother’s Day Peace Proclamation. Howe, horrified by the devastation of the Civil War and the death of America’s men, wrote the Proclamation to call on America’s women to gather together to “promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.” Some events will address the affect of war and occupation on women, specifically that of women in Iraq and Afghanistan, due to U.S. war.

The event will be filmed and broadcast live by The Real News network. Many CODEPINK groups nationwide will host solidarity Mother’s Day events to honor women living within occupation worldwide.

24-hour vigil schedule (tentative, more details to come)

Saturday, May 9
1 to 2:30 pm: Event Kick-off and Scavenger Hunt!

2:30  to 5 pm : Quilting Bee/Radical Knitting, Singing and Circling the White House in Pink
We’ll bind knitted squares, knitted by women across the country, to form a quilt with the message “We will not raise our children to kill another mother’s child” to string on the White House fence. Then we’ll circle the White House in a children’s march for peace!

5 to 6:30 p.m. : Learning Circles and Story-telling
Women are invited to participate in teach-ins that will educate and inspire us to create the world we want to live in. Meanwhile, kids can enjoy story-telling sessions.

7:30 pm to 10 pm : “Women’s Voices From War Zones” and Singer-Songwriter Melissa Ivey
Afghan, Iraqi and Pakistani women will share their perspective as women living under occupation and offer ideas for change. Indie singer-songrwriter Melissa Ivey will then take the stage to rev up the crowd.

Sunday, May 10
2  to 4 a.m. – Activist Training Workshops and Hula-Hooping with Co-founder Medea Benjamin
Guests will learn valuable skills for creative protest, media outreach, local group coordinating, strategizing to end war, and more. Renowned clown Patch Adams will lead “What     is your love strategy?” and co-founder Medea Benjamin will host a hula-hooping session.

4 to 7 a.m. : Pink Pajama Party!
All are invited to stay energized (and awake) with a pink scavenger hunt, hula-hooping, yoga, singing, and more!

7 a.m. to 8 a.m. : Walter Reed Peace Delegation flower delivery
A delegation of women will deliver hundreds of roses to mothers at Walter Reed Hospital visiting their children, demonstrating their support.

9  to 10 a.m. : Interfaith Service
To honor all the mothers that have been victimized by the war in Iraq, we will sing, chant, dance and listen to women from Goddess, Buddhist, Jewish, Christian, Muslim and Unitarian traditions.

10  to 11:30 a.m. : Children Peace Wishes
Little Friends for Peace, a non-profit peace education program for children, will lead the children in sharing their wishes for peace.

12:30 to 1 p.m. : Closing Ceremony of Roses to the White House
All participants will deliver roses to the White House.

For more information, please call Jean Stevens, national media coordinator, at 508-769-2138 or email at jean@codepinkalert.org, or Jodie Evans, at 310-621-5635 or Jodie@codepinkalert.org

Neither of these statements reflect the hope that energized millions just several short weeks ago. Maybe the honeymoon is over. Or maybe we need to take this opportunity as a peace movement and make sure that we don’t fall back into the same abusive relationship we had with the Bush White House; continuing to move forward and push Obama to do what’s right with a flawed strategy. Naiman calls it “counterpressure”- and the mainstream media needs it too…