The Democratic Socialists of America Veterans Working Group harshly condemns President Trump’s plan to continue the sixteen-year occupation of Afghanistan.

August 22, 2017

The history of Afghanistan since 1973 has been one of foreign intervention, subversion of popular will, and the devastation of the Afghan populace — a trend willfully continued by American political elites. Trump and his administration delude themselves in believing that a U.S. military solution can stabilize Afghanistan and South Asia. All it will bring is continued violence and radicalized young people in all countries involved. There is no military force that will achieve victory as this current administration defines it.

President Bush sent our troops to war without a clear goal. President Obama ordered a fruitless “troop surge” that achieved no military or political goals as the U.S. ruling class spilled the blood of its own citizens and the Afghan people alike. Since the collapse of the Taliban government in 2001 our purpose there has been singular: profit. This is immoral. Our society cannot continue to bear the social, moral, and economic costs of this war. By the end of 2019, the U.S. military will include servicemembers who were not yet born on September 11, 2001, children who were born into a world in which endless war is the natural order.

Americans must ask themselves: what have the hundreds of billions of dollars spent; the deaths of more than 2,000 American servicemembers, more than 100,000 Afghans, and unknown numbers of suicides or trauma related deaths; the stains upon our conscience, the torture, abuse, murder, and waste in Afghanistan brought us? The answer is nothing. The war is lost and has been for years. People are dying to secure the legacy and bank accounts of career officers and politicians whose ideas failed over a decade ago. The only solution is total and immediate withdrawal of all military forces from Afghanistan.

Thus, in the name of peace for both our American and Afghan brothers and sisters, our comrades who span every person-made border we say WITHDRAW.

Amber Mathwig, US Navy 2002-2012

Andrea Chandler, US Navy 1998-2008

Kyle Conrad, US Army 2006-2010

Kevin A. Green, US Navy 2006-2011

Timothy Hardin, US Army 2002-2014

Michael Dixon, US Navy 1982-1986

Greg Harden, US Army 2011-2016

EDR, US Marine Corps 2005-2009

Giuseppe Impastato, US Army 2010-2012; 2016-present

Jeff Kleiman, US Army 2004-2008

Chris Epps, US Army 2006-2014

Carmelo Delgado Delgado, US Army 2016-present

Luke Pratt, OKNG 2003-2006, US Army 2006-2010

Marty Mohr, US Army 2001-2011

SRG, US Navy 1991-2000

Lyle Rubin, US Marine Corps 2006-2011

Joshua Adams, US Army 2006-2010

Michael Patterson, US Army 2008-2011

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