A token withdrawal from Afghanistan is not enough from CREDO ACTION 23JUN11

COMMENTARY  from Credo, my progressive mobile phone company, on Pres Obama's Afghanistan speech, they are very active in the anti-war community.....

President Obama addressed the nation last night to lay out his new strategy for Afghanistan and explain his plans for a troop withdrawal starting in July. For months, CREDO members have been very active in pushing for a significant withdrawal. But that is not what President Obama announced. And given the willingness of the media to characterize the withdrawal as "aggressive" or "rapid," we wanted to share our perspective on where we are and where we will go from here. In his speech last night, President Obama announced plans to withdraw only 10,000 troops from Afghanistan this year and another 23,000 servicemembers by September of 2012. This means that at the end of his first term, President Obama will have twice as many troops in Afghanistan as when he came into office. This plan for withdrawal is a token gesture that signifies years more of the large-scale military occupation of Afghanistan — not a real effort to end the war. And while a token withdrawal starting in July is better than no withdrawal at all, the fact of the matter is that there is no military solution to the situation in Afghanistan and we need to focus on rapidly bringing all of our troops home. Yet there are still signs that our activism is making a difference. We've seen increased efforts in Congress to push for a speedy withdrawal from Afghanistan. Recently, the House narrowly defeated the McGovern-Jones amendment that would require a timeline for withdrawal from Afghanistan. And just last week, 26 senators signed onto a letter urging President Obama to start a "sizable and sustained" withdrawal in July (and that does not count other senators who made public statements to that effect since the letter was sent). CREDO has supported these efforts with thousands of phone calls and dozens of constituent meetings. Congresswoman Barbara Lee, a progressive champion working to end this war, even delivered over 120,000 petition signatures from CREDO members to President Obama urging him to make the July withdrawal significant. And I was recently told privately by a Congressman that many of his colleagues were unhappy with the continued war but were holding their tongues and not speaking out publicly until the president announced his plans for the withdrawal. Based on that conversation I expect that many of these members of Congress were as disappointed as we were by the president's announcement. So with increasing support for our position in Congress, and poll after poll showing that the public wants the president to end the war in Afghanistan, we are slowly but surely gaining momentum. We will continue to push for an end to the war in Afghanistan, and we hope you will continue to join us in this effort. Thank you for all that you do. Your activism matters. Matt Lockshin, Campaign Manager CREDO Action from Working Assets P.S. We thought you might want to see how members of Congress responded to President Obama's speech. The Huffington Post has a good roundup of reactions from Democratic members of Congress, including those leading the effort to end the war in Afghanistan. You can read that article by clicking here.