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Kucinich: We are Not Exiting Afghanistan. We are Staying.
Washington D.C. (May 2, 2012) – Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), who has led the call to end the war in Afghanistan, today released the following statement after President Obama announced that the U.S. has signed a Strategic Partnership Agreement with Afghanistan.
“Yesterday, the President announced that the U.S. signed a Strategic Partnership Agreement with Afghanistan, committing the United States to the country for a long time to come. The agreement addressed the transition to Afghan-led security forces by 2014. Human and monetary costs to the U.S. will continue to skyrocket.
“According to a recent article in The Atlantic, the U.S. spends an estimated $14,000 per Afghan troop per year. The long-term costs to the U.S. to train the 352,000 Afghan security troops we are counting on to allow the withdrawal of U.S. troops will be over $4 billion per year; or more than $40 billion over the next ten years. The Associated Press recently highlighted a report that raises significant questions regarding International Security Assistance Force claims that there have been Afghan-led military operations, an indicator of progress toward Afghan military self sufficiency, a cornerstone of our strategy.
“It is widely recognized that much of Al-Qaeda’s leadership and presence in Afghanistan has been decimated. Since the death of Osama bin Laden exactly one year ago, we have lost 381 U.S. troops. The President stated that ‘we must give Afghanistan the opportunity to stabilize.’ The assertion that maintaining a long-term presence in the country is the best way to prevent future attacks on the U.S. belies the reality on the ground: that our mere presence is destabilizing. The events of the past few months alone – the Koran burnings, coordinated attacks by the Taliban in Kabul, and the killing of Afghan civilians by a U.S. solider – should be enough of an indication that more time in Afghanistan is not the answer.
“America has been lulled to sleep by the mindboggling elongation of a war seven thousand miles away. The plain fact is we are not exiting Afghanistan, despite the appearances which the White House is trying to create. We are staying. Have we learned nothing from ten years of quagmire? It is time to bring our troops home safely and responsibly.”
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On Proposal to Fund Military With Cuts to Food Stamps, Kucinich Asks “What Kind of Country Do We Want to Live In?”
Washington D.C. (May 2, April 2012) -- Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) today asked Americans to consider what kind of a country they want to live in – a country where our friends and neighbors have enough food to eat or a nation that wages unending warfare. The question comes as recent news reports point to a proposal to cut food assistance for hungry families to fund the Department of Defense.
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“What are our national priorities? This is not an abstract question. What kind of a country do we want to live in?
“We spend about $115 billion a year for the war in Afghanistan alone. By comparison, since the Wall Street financial disaster of 2008, the down economy has resulted in millions of Americans losing their homes to foreclosure. Tens of millions can’t find jobs. Five-point-five million people have not been able to find work in more than 27 weeks.
“Last year alone, nearly 45 million Americans needed help to simply have enough food to eat. For those not qualified through other programs, a family of four would need to survive on less than $29,055 a year in order to be eligible for this assistance. In the United States of America, nearly 1 in 6 Americans needed help just to put food on the table.
“Now, because of two wars fought on our nation’s credit card, the Bush tax cuts and a slow economy, our government is currently operating at a deficit. Economists encourage government to spend more to spur economic growth, but Congress has called for austerity instead. Because of the Budget Control Act passed last summer, we need to cut $1.2 trillion over 10 years beginning in 2013, with half the cuts coming from the Department of Defense.
“Despite the years of massive growth and well-documented inefficiency, many people in Washington think it’s unacceptable to cut the Pentagon’s budget. Instead, they are trying to find other places to make the cuts.
“Where do Washington politicians want to make cuts to protect the war budget? You guessed it: food assistance for hungry Americans.
“This is what it means to consider our national priorities. Do we want to live in a country where our friends and neighbors have enough to eat? Or a country that wages unending wars abroad?”
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The world is up side down. It has been for milleniums of years since Humanity became enslaved, corrupted, subordinated. Slavery and totalitarian class policies operate on three levels. It must use class deformed language and create class myths to hide their despotism, corruption, by INVERTING REALITY. It establishes the INVERSON of reality through the principle of INVERTED TOTALTARIANISM, which holds true for all forms of class history, from its inception , establishment of the Patriarchal, CLASS MECHANISM. The inversion of reality, social power, social forces once were INDEPENDENT, INDIVISIBE, as an operating Social Mechanism, social principle, but were CORRUPTED, DEFORMED, into dependent class hierarchies linked to the Patriarchal class mechanism.
Thus totalitarianism, enslavement, corruption, did not begin with Reaganism, nor even with the writer, GEORGE ORWELL, and his book 1984,, which described how a totalitarian principle operates. His description of a degenerating, inverted reality/world is the very same inverted totalitarian, class principle which has been with us for thousands of years. It produced two parallel deformed class outcomes, Orwell's description of both FASCISM and STALINISM. Both are linked to deforming class hierchies and the enslaving Patriarchal class mechanism, which produces these outcomes through domination. Nor did the inverted totalitarian, class principle begin its despotism with the BETRAYAL, of the Enlightenment, social agenda, and its social patriotism. Social Enlightenment gave way to Capitalism by having failed to dismantle class hierarchies with its Patriarchal class mechanism. LATE CAPITALISM reflects the LATE CLASS HISTORY, now milleniums years old, which still is producing degeneratng class cycles , failed states, class/rogue states, where crippled , corrupte class republics degenerate into totalitarianism, producing class tyrants and parasitical ruling classes. The Enlightenment, called, not only, for an end , to Feudalism and its monopoly MERCANTILISM, but an end of all class hierarchies, end of class history.
These degenerating class cycles, with their inverted reality, class dogmas, began with class myths, first in religious clothes. The Bible had to hide to hide the enslavement , downfall of women, into property, class enslaving relations, called chattel property, then all of humanity itself. Humanity participated in their own slavery, by emracing fairy tales, class myths, hence the argument of an inherent corruption of Human nature, which Christianity, and all three Patriarchal religions still, falsely embrace. The religious dogmas are CLASS DOGMAS to hide the fact that there was once a time in history, where social forces, social principles were INDEPENDENT, INDIVISIBLE, where humanity was not deformed, enslaved by class hierarchies and Patriarchy,falsely equated with HUMAN NATURE. We must reclaim SOCIAL POWER, INDEPENDENT INDIVISIBLE SOCIAL CONTROL that once existed before clss history enslaved humanity, through social, egalitarian, universal, inclusive principles, that creates HUMAN RIGHTS OVER CLASS RIGHTS. We must reclaim the SOCIAL, HISTORICAL MECHANISM, that one existed in the social Matriarchy before it was deformed into Patriarchy and class slavery.
WE MUST RECLAIM MAY DAY, WORKER'S/STUDENT, SOCIAL PATRIOTISM, SOCIAL MIDDLE CLASSES, reclaim the social agenda of the Enlightenment and its social, revolutionary liberals, who promoted social theory, social principles and Social patriotism. We must reclaim A GLOBAL SOCIAL MOVEMENT against fascist austerity, fascist Capitalism, all of class history, and we must TURN RIGHT SIDE UP REALITY, RECONSTRUCTED SOCIAL , INDEPENDENT POWER, that dismantles class hierarchies and class history. Above all we must expose the historical betrayal of the Enlightenment, where social liberals, became a class ideology, in the Post enlightnment, and now have degenerated like all class parties, class ideologies, into TOTALITARIANISM, FASCISM. OBAMA INVERTS REALITY, PROMOTES INVERTED TOTALITARIANISM, EVEN HIS FASCIST EMPIRE. WE MUST CONFRONT LIBERALS with this long term corruption, degeneration of Liberalism that was born in Class betrayal, rejection of the Enlightenment for FASCISM:
Obama Touts War’s End in Afghanistan, But Critics See Election-Year Guise for Prolonged Occupation (VIDEO)
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/5/2/obama_touts_wars_end_in_afghanistan
excerpt:
"TARIQ ALI: Well, you know, formal withdrawals are useless, because essentially what the agreement—Karzai has signed. And who does he speak for? He’s not a sovereign leader. Afghanistan is not a sovereign state; it’s an occupied state. So having President Obama go there and sign a deal with a puppet president who represents nobody and who can barely travel inside the country itself is a joke. And for this guy to agree that U.S. forces can use the bases 'til 2024 is a total joke, because he won't be there. If the Americans really leave Afghanistan, they’d be well advised to take him with them...
TARIQ ALI: I know. Well, what else could he say, Amy, when it was such an obvious, blatant violation of everything the West is supposed to stand for? And, of course, pretending that this is an individual act by one guy, not part of a general problem. I mean, this is one guy doing it. Essentially, U.S. military policy in the region is to do it systematically in different parts of the country. That’s the real problem. And the fact that Karzai has to come out and say this in these conditions shows how much anger there is. And by the way, 60 percent of U.S. citizens, according to the last Pew foundation opinion pollings, are against carrying on in that country. So the Afghans don’t want it, American citizens don’t want it, but the United States president is carrying on...
TARIQ ALI: It’s, you know, surreal. The Afghan people have made it clear they don’t want them. The training he talks about, the number of incidents there have been of trained Afghan soldiers actually then breaking loose and carrying out attacks on the occupying armies in Afghanistan are now legion. The special agents they have trained have turned on intelligence agents from the West and killed them. And the reason for that is that large numbers of Afghans join the army and the police forces to get training, because that is what the insurgent leadership tells them to do, and then they turn these guns on the occupiers. So the notion that everything is calm and that Karzai somehow represents something is a totally grotesque analysis..."
These drone attacks, most people, many, many international lawyers regard them as illegal anyway. Targeting your own citizens abroad, targeting your own citizens where they are, is an added dimension to this. This is the first president who’s now acquired the right, the legal right, to order the targeting and killing of any U.S. citizen without recourse to law. This has happened under this particular president, so—
OBAMA HAS INVERTED REALITY , DISTORTED IT INTO A SELF INDUCED PSYCHOSIS, HE HAS BECOME A WAR CRIMINAL , A FASCIST.