The reality is that this debate has nothing to do with ending the war in Afghanistan. On BOTH sides . . . the argument is over HOW to advance U.S. strategic interests. Any discussion of the U.S. pulling out of Afghanistan altogether is being ruled out of order. -- Larry Everest

Why are the major 'antiwar' groups fanning a debate between no change in the number of troops in Afghanistan, which only 8% of Americans support, and increasing troops, which just 39% support? Why not, instead, represent, very loudly, the 49% of America that wants to withdraw or cut the number of troops in that pointless, bloody, eight-year-long farce? We still need what the 'war is peace' groups decided not to give us, a national march on the White House demanding OUT NOW. Below is the latest CNN poll, and then some wise voices explaining why we must leave and exactly how to do so:

CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll. Oct. 16-18, 2009. N=1,038 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3.

"Would you favor or oppose sending more troops to Afghanistan?"

Favor 39%
Oppose 59%
Unsure 2%

"Would you favor or oppose sending more troops to Afghanistan?" If oppose: "Do you think the U.S. should keep the same number of troops in Afghanistan as it currently has, or do you think the U.S. should reduce the number of troops in that country but keep some there, or do you think the U.S. should immediately withdraw all troops from Afghanistan?" Combined answers.

Send More 39%
Keep Same 8%
Reduce 21%
Withdraw All 28%
Unsure 3%

The war and occupation are not working, not only the fight against the Taliban but also the billions of nation-building dollars wasted through a warlord-dominated, illegitimate government. So a wide range of respected voices are telling us to leave. In fact, The Nation's Robert Dreyfuss even tells us exactly how to do so:

A new government in Kabul must emerge, in the process accommodating Pashtun nationalists, the Taliban and other insurgents. Those latter groups, along with tribal and ethnic leaders, various warlords and representatives of Afghanistan's myriad political factions, will need international support to underwrite a new national compact. That national accord will probably not be a strong central government but rather a decentralized federal system in which provinces and districts retain a significant degree of autonomy. To secure international support, the United States must defer to the United Nations to convene a conference in which Afghans themselves hammer out the new way forward. The world community must pledge its support of Afghanistan financially for years to come. And this must occur against the backdrop of an unconditional withdrawal of US and NATO forces.

Accordingly, the first step for Washington must be to abandon the idea of a decades-long counterinsurgency, fire its advocates--including Gen. Stanley McChrystal and Gen. David Petraeus, architect of the Counterinsurgency Field Manual--and admit that the multiheaded insurgency in southern and eastern Afghanistan can't be defeated by military means. At the same time, the Obama administration will have to give up its massive nation-building project, dismantling the empire of US departments, agencies, provincial reconstruction teams and the rest now overseen by Richard Holbrooke, the US special envoy. Instead, the United States should prepare to channel a substantial flow of international development assistance and humanitarian aid to Afghanistan through a newly reconstructed, rebalanced Afghan government.

There is also Spike's Tara McCormack, who describes both the U.S.'s unsuccessful puppet government stage management, attempting to make its puppet government pass the cringe test, and the reality that corrupt, unrepresentative rulers are what U.S. wants and has wanted:

Possessing neither the will nor the clout to make Afghanistan in its image, the West has opted for cheap theatrical tricks instead. The so-called democratic Afghan elections have been staged and run entirely for the benefit of Western domestic constituencies. American and British governments can at least say to their voters that all the money and casualties have been in a noble cause: bringing democracy to Afghanistan. Moreover, the elections also have the advantage of shifting the blame, of making the disaster of the war and occupation into the fault of the Afghans themselves. The focus is now on the flawed election and the failures of Karzai rather than on the overall process of invasion and occupation that led to this fiasco.

The truth is that the Afghan elections have been an entirely Western stage-managed affair from beginning to end. Karzai himself was picked by America and it is the West that has insisted on elections. Yet Karzai is a man who has no political constituency in Afghan society apart from that which he can establish through corruption and patronage. The power of the Afghan government is a polite fiction maintained for the benefit of Western viewers, with the writ of the government hardly extending outside Kabul. Moreover, the reality of Afghan society is such that a liberal democratic election is fairly meaningless. In many areas of the country women cannot leave their houses and vast numbers of people vote according to what local tribal chiefs tell them (quite rationally, of course, considering that Afghan society is still organised along communal tribal lines).

How else could Karzai have `delivered' the right election results other than through fraud? The only surprise is that only a third of the votes cast for Karzai were fraudulent. Having set up this farcical situation, the West now castigates Karzai and heaps scorn upon him, warning that until he turns that benighted country into Switzerland, he will not receive any aid. Well, that might be bad for Karzai and his capacity to dispense patronage, but it will really make little difference to the Afghan people as a whole. As a recent article in the New York Times revealed, beyond Kabul the situation is so dangerous that most aid workers simply cannot leave the city and virtually no aid reaches the Afghan people anyway.

Finally, some simple common sense remarks by someone who was involved in the early stages of the occupation, Colonel Ann Wright, Ret.:

Retired Colonel Ann Wright, who resigned from the US State Department over the US Invasion of Iraq, was in Atlanta last week to promote her new book and argue for a phased US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Wright's visit was sponsored by the Georgia Peace and Justice Coalition, Atlanta, and included several events around Atlanta. Wright made a keynote address Tuesday evening, October 06, 2009, at the First Iconium Baptist Church.

"I helped open the US embassy in Afghanistan in 2001. . . . We thought there was a small window of opportunity for the international community to get together," to try to improve the country, Wright said during her speech. . . .

"Remember what the Administrations the US supported in Vietnam? Administrations the people of Vietnam didn't want," Wright said.

"It's been eight years [since the invasion]. We're already in a quagmire," she said. "Almost a trillion dollars spent. Tens of thousands of deaths of Afghan people. Everybody knows this is the graveyard of empires."

"This is wrong. We've got to get out of Afghanistan," Wright said.

Where is an antiwar movement that wants us to leave Afghanistan now? Though many fine individuals, another is Pascal Zachary, say the right thing, it is difficult to find such U.S. organizations (though I appreciate any direction readers can offer in the comments). I mean, aside from the organization Larry Everest (quoted at the top of this article) is a member of, Bob Avakian's Revolutionary Communist Party, USA. I found the position of even the usually crystal clear American Friends Service Committee grey and noncommittal, mentioning neither the words 'troops' nor 'withdraw' (or their variants) in the linked position statement (written in the summer of 2009).