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Rethink Afghanistan

General Stanley McChrystal, the top US commander in Afghanistan, has requested 3000 urgently needed extra troops to Afghanistan, in addition to the 21,000 troops scheduled to be sent this year under the President’s orders. Under Obama’s orders the total number of troops in Afghanistan could reach up to 68,000. July and August were the bloodiest months for US troops in Afghanistan and this month looks to keep that death rate constant. More than 750 troops have been killed in Afghanistan since the start of the war nearly 8 years ago, and untold numbers of Afghan civilians have also been killed, either directly by the US or by the increasingly bold Taliban force, that derive their strength from the US occupation. Meanwhile, the US there is facing an added test of credibility with the recent Presidential elections. Former US President Jimmy Carter called the elections “despicable” and said flat out that the US-backed incumbent “Hamid Karzai has stolen the election.” After a dispute within the United Nations over the validity of the elections, American deputy Peter Galbraith returned to his home in Vermont. Galbraith had recommended annulling election results from 1000 of the 6,500 polling places, and recounting votes from another 5000. The European Union has declared that 25% of ballots in the election were fraudulent or tampered in some way.

Today we’ll spend the hour focusing on what many are calling Obama’s Iraq: that is the on-going occupation of Afghanistan, which began 1 1/2 years before the Iraq war. Leading up to the 8th anniversary of the start of Operation Enduring Freedom this October 7th, a recent CNN poll found that 58% of Americans oppose the Afghanistan war.

GUEST: Norman Solomon, author of “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death,” and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He just returned from Afghanistan.

We are featuring this hour the newly completed film by Brave New Films and Robert Greenwald, called Rethink Afghanistan, the definitive and newest film questioning the very basis for the US occupation. The film will open in New York in early October but KPFK listeners get to put in early orders for the DVD right now through our fund drive.