As U.S. moves to send more troops to Afghanistan Join the Oct. 17 protests!
2009 2009-10Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 1 →
The words are the paper's own, from its digital file; the division into articles was made by machine, so a box or caption can end up inside the article next to it.
Scan page 1
VOL. 29, NO. 10, OCTOBER 2009 WWW.SOCIALISTACTION.ORG U.S. / CANADA $1 Don Wright / AP (Above) Labor protest on Sept. 20 during the G-20 conference in Pittsburgh. On Sept. 25, close to 10,000 joined a protest march despite police repression.
why the images in the media are so sanitized....
“This disconnect between what the public is expecting, or willing to accept, regarding the war in Afghanistan, and what the White House and the Pentagon are in fact planning is vast. Americans want their politicians to concentrate on the economy here at home. After the long, sad experience in Iraq, and the worst economic shock since the Depression, they are not up for extended combat and endless nation-building in Afghanistan.”
Similarly, “More Troops or ‘Mission Failure’” is the headline of a Sept. 21 Washington Post article by staff writer Bob Woodward, who comments, “The top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan [General Stanley McChrystal] warns in an urgent, confidential assessment of the war that he needs more forces within the next year and bluntly states that without them, the eight-year conflict ‘will likely result in failure,’ according to a copy of the 66-page document obtained by The Washington Post.”
General McChrystal’s proposal to send an additional 45,000 troops to Afghanistan appears to an important section of the U.S. class to be throwing good money after bad. Even Obama has publicly queried, while the debate is in progress, whether there might be other reports out there with different conclusions. The momentary fissure among the warmakers has opened new opportunities to reach a layer of working people who have been long opposed to the U.S. wars but who believed that Obama’s election would bring them to a reasonably rapid close.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, the newly formed October 17 Antiwar Coalition now includes local chapters of all five of the nation’s national antiwar coalitions and several other groups. The coalition is planning a major march and rally beginning at the city’s United Nations Plaza in the heart of the city.
Organizations joining in the Bay Area effort include Red-baiting See page 6 Mark Ralston / AFP / Getty Images See page 2
----- pull-quotes -----
Rightists rally in D.C. — 4 U.S. Afghanistan strategy — 5 Cockburn red-bates antiwar mvt. — 6 Stella workers face shutdown — 9