Response to President Obama's Announcement on Troop Escalation

Dec. 1st - The American Party of Labor expressed today its sincere and principled opposition to the latest announcement by President Barack Obama to escalate the United States' military presence in occupied Afghanistan by more than 30,000 US soldiers.

Today’s announcement represents the administration’s renewed investment in waging a costly, long-term and indefensible colonialist war against the people of Afghanistan, who have suffered unfathomable hardships, misery and privation after more than eight years of foreign military control.

Washington's escalation of the war in Afghanistan constitutes a grave threat to the countless innocent civilians who will die as a direct result of today’s decision. But even more, the President’s so-called strategy for “finishing the job” in Afghanistan will only further destabilize a region gripped by instability, while concurrently inhibiting local development and progress for generations to come. In effect, the President’s decision to deploy tens of thousands of additional US soldiers to occupied Afghanistan aims to ensure that the region remains completely powerless to develop itself along its own lines, with the ultimate aim of providing newly opened markets for American and Western exports as soon as conditions are favorable.

But the Obama administration's failures, just like its predecessor's, rest in its sheer arrogance - blinding it to the realities of the situation as they currently exist. Once again, these developments have shown the government's shortsightedness and inability to learn from its own failed history. Not unlike US military intervention in Vietnam, the United States government finds itself today confronted with a quickly degenerating situation in Afghanistan:

* Faced with a growing insurgency proving itself capable of inflicting heavy losses against the foreign invaders;

* Stuck in a politically compromising position while providing near limitless support for an utterly corrupt collaborator-regime;

* And now deploying thousands of US military men and women to fight and die in an unwinnable and unnecessary war.

Moreover, the President's decision today is at odds with the majority of the people in this country that currently oppose the escalation of so-called "Operation Enduring Freedom." The steady decrease in public support for US adventurism and imperialism in Afghanistan reflects the rapidly declining situation on the ground, compounded by reports of more and more American soldiers coming home in body bags or severely maimed on a near daily basis.

From the very beginning, the American war against Afghanistan and Iraq has been based on the purported claims that the war of absolute necessity in ensuring the US’s national security. These claims, unsubstantiated by any evidence whatsoever, provided the precedent for the previous administration under George W. Bush, and abetted by a shamelessly complicit mainstream media, to wage a war of aggression against the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan in order to expand US material interests in the region while providing the economic consumption necessary to satisfy the insatiable greed of this country’s military industrial complex.

The American Party of Labor declares itself in strong opposition to the continuation of the war in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Somalia and demands the unconditional and immediate withdrawal of all foreign military forces abroad—coinciding with the restoration of sovereignty into the hands of the peoples currently under siege by US militarism abroad.

About the American Party of Labor:
Founded in 2008, The American Party of Labor is a revolutionary working class organization. Our aim is to abolish the capitalist system and all its horrors by replacing it with socialism, a system based on the principle laid out by Marx, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his work.”