Posted by CODEPINK Staff

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE    Feb. 19, 2009    CONTACT
Jean Stevens, CODEPINK national media coordinator, 646-723-1781



WASHINGTON -- CODEPINK Women for Peace is heartbroken and discouraged by President Obama's decision to deploy an additional 17,000 troops to Afghanistan, a screeching halt to his rhetoric for change and moving our country in a new direction.

CODEPINK women call on Obama and his administration to reject a proven-false military solution, and call for a surge in diplomacy and humanitarian aid and an immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Afghanistan.

"It makes no sense to appoint Richard Holbrooke to find a way out of the Afghan quagmire while sending 17,000 more troops," said Medea Benjamin, CODEPINK co-founder. "You can't do diplomacy while widening the war. We must freeze the number of troops, engage in immediate diplomatic efforts — with Afghan women at the table — and then replace our military mission with a humanitarian, reconstruction mission. That would reflect the change the American people voted for."

The deployment is a continuation of the same failed U.S. policies that have inspired a Taliban resurgence, raised civilian deaths, and destabilized infrastructure and social system. There is no military solution to Afghanistan, as many military officials and think-tanks have concluded. "You don't kill or capture your way out of an industrial-strength insurgency," Gen. David Petraeus told the Associated Press recently, and Special Envoy Holbrooke said, "It is like no other problem we have confronted...I have never seen anything like the mess we have inherited."

Not only will military policies not work, but they will lead to an increase in civilian deaths at the hands of the U.S military. A United Nations report released earlier this week found the Afghan civilian death toll nearly doubled in 2008, with the U.S. directly blamed for almost half of these deaths. The number of Afghan people who believe the US has performed well dropped this year to 32 percent from 68 percent in 2005, military scholar Anthony Cordesman told a Congressional hearing last week.  Meanwhile, more than two-thirds of Americans oppose increasing the deployments, and European opposition is so great that leaders of Spain, France and Germany have refused to send any additional forces.

Obama must take bold and compassionate action to address the Afghan's real need for health care, clean water and education by providing humanitarian assistance through non-governmental organizations, instead of continuing to cripple Afghanistan with more years of war. The definition of insanity is to repeat the same action and expect different results. It's time for change.

For interviews and more information, please call Jean Stevens, national media coordinator, at 646-723-1781.