[Peace-discuss] U.S. Rep. Johnson Joins Members in Seeking Afghan Exit

[Robert Naiman]

*For Immediate Release                                          *

Nov. 18, 2010




U.S. Rep. Johnson Joins Members in Seeking Afghan Exit

* *

            WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Rep. Timothy V. Johnson today signed on
to a bipartisan letter opposing a troop presence in Afghanistan through
2014.

             The letter is in response to remarks earlier in the week from
Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Adm.
Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, citing the end of
2014 as the key date for handing over the defense of Afghanistan to the
Afghan government.

            “This has become the longest war in U.S. history,” wrote Rep.
Lynn Woolsey of California and the author of the Dear Colleague letter to
President Obama. “The rate of casualties is at an all-time high. And we have
already spent $365 billion on this unwinnable war.”

            Rep. Johnson, a longtime skeptic of the Afghanistan strategy,
concurred.

            “We’ve already lost 1,400 men and women there and more this
year, some 450 people, than any other of the nine years we’ve been there,”
Rep. Johnson said. “I doubt our country is any safer for that loss of life
and the expenditure of well over $1 trillion in tax dollars for the wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq. Afghanistan remains in chaos. The government remains
inept and corrupt. We’re experiencing more casualties than ever before and
only inflaming the country by our mere presence. Civilian casualties number
in the tens of thousands.

            “Afghanistan doesn’t have an exclusive haven for terrorists who
wish us harm. They’re all over and there are smarter, more effective ways of
containing them than the conventional strategies being employed in
Afghanistan. I remain firmly opposed to continuing this war and to putting
more Americans at risk,” Rep. Johnson said.





                                                        ###



-- 
Robert Naiman
Policy Director
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
naiman at justforeignpolicy.org

Urge Congress to Support a Timetable for Military Withdrawal from
Afghanistan
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/feingold-mcgovern
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/attachments/20101118/879b72eb/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 13717 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/attachments/20101118/879b72eb/attachment-0001.jpe>