In an article on Common Dreams on Thursday, 20 April 2017, you can read the following:
“Despite the lack of information from the Pentagon about President Donald Trump’s deployment on April 13 of the ‘Mother of All Bombs’ in Afghanistan—or its aftermath—close to 70 percent of American voters say they ‘strongly’ or ‘somewhat’ support the bombing, according to a new poll.” Read about that here.
Children ride by debris from US bombings in Afghanistan
I want to go on record as being an American who strongly disapproves of that bombing.
Congress did empower the president to pursue al-Qaida in Afghanistan in 2001 in an effort against those who were said to have attacked the US on September 11 of that year. [There is still uncertainty about who did attack the World Trade Center at that time.] Unlike Trump’s bombing in Syria however, it might be claimed that there was congressional approval for bombing in Afghanistan.
Still, that authorization was very long ago and hardly seems appropriate today. If Afghanistan ever did attack the US (which is certainly not clear), it has not done harm to this country in many years. It is rather the US that has done massive harm to Afghanistan, a small and poor state.
As a US citizen, I do not want our tax dollars to pay for aggression on Afghanistan. There was a call from three Afghans, Seelai Popal, Ali A. Olomi, and Laila Rashidie “for people of conscience in the U.S. to step forward and demand an end to the murder of the Afghan people and the poisoning of our land. The terrorism waged by the U.S. and its allies in the name of the ‘war on terror’ far outstrips the violence of those they claim to fight. It is time for the global community to demand that all militaries stop using our people and our lands as testing grounds for war and weaponry.”
I am responding to that call; I am demanding the end of the murder of the Afghan people and the poisoning of their land by the United States. I demand that the US stop using the Afghan people and their land as testing ground for war and weaponry.