May 23, 2011 | Posted by Stephen Miles
Freshman Congressman Justin Amash (R-MI) has written an op-ed strongly arguing against the radical expansion of war currently under consideration in Congress. Read More »
April 14, 2011 | Posted by Win Without War
Retired General Stanley McChrystal will be returning to the White House to join a new initiative led by Michelle Obama and Jill Biden to support and honor military families. Mary Tillman called the move "foolish" and questioned McChrystal's concern for soldiers' loved ones. Read More »
March 16, 2011 | Posted by Brock McIntosh
A recent Washington Post-ABC News poll reveals that disapproval against the war in Afghanistan has reached its highest point since the war began nearly 10 years ago. Sixty four percent of Americans say that the war in Afghanistan is “not worth fighting.” Read More »
February 24, 2011 | Posted by Tom Andrews
Lt. General William Caldwell needs to be fired. Now. General Caldwell, a three star general in charge of training Afghanistan troops allegedly ordered that the Army’s arsenal of psychological weapons of war be trained on Members of Congress and other “VIPs” in order to manipulate them into giving the Army more money and troops for its Afghanistan operation. According to Rolling Stone, the head of an Army “Information Operations” unit in Afghanistan, Lt. Colonel Michael Holmes, has been under orders from Caldwell to find “pressure points” to use against the visiting Congressional delegations and secretly manipulate them without their knowledge. Holmes quoted the general’s Chief of Staff: “What do I have to plant inside their heads?” Read More »
February 14, 2011 | Posted by Ryan Anderson
Federal budget cutting fever hits the floor of the House of Representatives tomorrow. Defense spending, however, seems to have received a cost cutting inoculation by Republican leaders who have reserved all of the pain for the domestic side. While Republicans have cut billions of dollars from important domestic programs in the name of fiscal responsibility, funding for the Department of Defense has increased by $8.1 million. Read More »
February 01, 2011 | Posted by Tom Andrews
Just in case you missed it, there was good news and bad news in President Obama’s State of the Union speech when it came to the war in Afghanistan: The good news is that he reaffirmed his commitment to begin the withdrawal of US troops in July. The bad news is that he made claims about the war and the fight against al Qaeda that were both misleading and inaccurate – claims that could undermine any opportunity for withdrawing significant numbers of US troops from Afghanistan in July. We don’t have to wait to July to start worrying. Read More »
December 16, 2010 | Posted by Tom Andrews
Few were surprised that the Obama Administration reports "signs of progress" in Afghanistan in their assessment of strategy in Afghanistan, released today. Yet numerous publicly available analyses – including the Pentagon’s own November 2010 "Report on Progress Toward Security and Stability" to Congress – point to fundamental problems with the current military-led strategy. The significant escalation of troops over the past 22 months has only exacerbated these problems, and a long-term foreign military presence will only continue that trend. In light of these sobering facts, the President should immediately begin taking the political and diplomatic steps necessary to end the war and withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan Read More »
December 02, 2010 | Posted by Daniel Pollitt
Two of President Obama's most important allies on Afghanistan from the left are now changing course and calling for a significant reduction of U.S. military forces in Afghanistan. Read More »
November 08, 2010 | Posted by Daniel Pollitt
The spin machine is in full mode according to an article on the war in Afghanistan in today's New York Times. Read More »
November 08, 2010 | Posted by Daniel Pollitt
A study on the effects of repeated deployments of members of the military, found that their children are 10 % more likely to see a doctor for a "...mental health difficulty when a parent is deployed than when a parent is home." Read More »
October 18, 2010 | Posted by Daniel Pollitt
Different perspectives with the same outcome. Nancy Goldstone, a medieval historian, writing in the LA Times, compares our involvement In Afghanistan to the unsuccessful English side in the second half of the 100 Years War in the 15th century. Greg Sheridan, Foreign Editor of The Weekend Australian has different take on the current situation in Afghanistan. Sheridan once declared that, "George W. Bush may well be judged, ultimately, a great president, especially in foreign policy, especially in the war on terror. This consensus won't form for 20 or perhaps 30 years."Sheridan writes in a op-ed that he, "...no longer believe we can win in any meaningful way in Afghanistan, beyond the bar minimum of keeping our worst enemies out of power at least formally." Read More »
October 15, 2010 | Posted by Ryan Anderson
"All We Need Is Time." Wrong. In the latest issue of Foreign Policy Gilles Dorronsoro debunks the Pentagon's top pro-war arguments and the faulty conventional wisdom of the foreign policy elite. Read More »
October 04, 2010 | Posted by Daniel Pollitt
With the mobilization of tens of thousands of Americans this past weekend at the One Nation rally for jobs, justice, and education at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., we at Win Without War were reminded of a great speech by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Over 40 years ago, Dr. King gave a speech outlining his opposition to the Vietnam War, at the Riverside Church in New York City. Read More »
September 01, 2010 | Posted by Tom Andrews
While President Obama called on the nation last night to “move beyond our differences” on the disastrous US Iraq policy, the Congressional Republican leadership – John Boehner in the House and Mitch McConnell in the Senate- were delivering high-octane speeches attacking the president for opposing the military surge of US forces in 2007 that they claim turned the tide in the Iraq war. In fact a surge did turn out to be a key to changing direction in the catastrophe that followed the US invasion and military occupation in Iraq. But, it wasn’t the surge of military forces that Boehner, McConnell and their fellow Iraq war apologists talk about, but the surge in anti-war sentiment in both the United States and Iraq. Read More »
August 19, 2010 | Posted by Daniel Pollitt
Watch Tom debate former Bush White House staffer Dan Senor on Petraeus' media blitz to re-sell the Afghan War. Read More »
August 17, 2010 | Posted by Tom Andrews
“That's why our troop commitment in Afghanistan cannot be open-ended -- because the nation that I'm most interested in building is our own." That was the commitment President Obama made when he announced the military escalation of American troops in Afghanistan before an audience of cadets at West Point last year. That was then, this is now. The media tour that General David Petraeus embarked on this week demonstrates that a withdrawal is, in fact, fully underway – not of US troops from Afghanistan, but rather, of the president’s assurance that we do not have an open ended military commitment to the Karzai government in Afghanistan. The Petraeus media tour is making it crystal clear - July 2011 is more political gesture than time-frame for the withdrawal of US forces. Read More »
August 10, 2010 | Posted by Hasnain Nazar
Courtesy of Dan Froomkin and Huffington Post we present to you Senator Obama vs President Obama. This video highlights the transformation of Senator Obama from a skeptic of President Bush's military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan to President Obama as a champion of the Afghan War. Read More »
August 06, 2010 | Posted by Hasnain Nazar & Daniel Pollitt
As reported by the Washington Post, President Hamid Karzai ordered an investigation into the U.S.-backed Major Crimes Task Force, charged with rooting out corruption in the Afghan government. Karzai ordered the probe after a top adviser, Mohammad Zia Saleh, an official in the office of the national security adviser, was arrested by the Task Force for allegedly agreeing to accept a 10,000 dollar car in return for promising to shut down "the investigation of an influential government official for drug smuggling." Read More »
August 02, 2010 | Posted by Ryan Anderson
Former State Department Official Matt Hoh joins Win Without War's Tom Andrews to discuss the WikiLeaks "War Logs," this week's vote on war funding in Congress and the war in Afghanistan. Read More »
July 27, 2010 | Posted by Hasnain Nazar
Today the House debated and then voted on the emergency war supplemental. Watch Reps. David Obey, Jim McGovern and Barbara Lee speak out against the war in Afghanistan. Read More »
