On #AfghanistanTuesday, Tell NATO to DEMILITARIZE Afghanistan

For months, people working to end the war in Afghanistan have joined together every week to share information and spread the word on #AfghanistanTuesday using Twitter.

With the NATO summit in Chicago just weeks away, now is the time to get EVERYBODY joining the weekly #AfghanistanTuesday virtual demonstrations.

Feb 21, 2012: #OccupyChicago Don't let #NATO *leave* 
#Chicago until it agrees to DEMILITARIZE #Afghanistan!

What will you be talking about on #AfghanistanTuesday? There's so much to be done, even as the U.S. and its NATO allies entertain sanguine talk about withdrawing combat troops and lull their respective populations into ever deeper states of groggy inattention.

Just think about what it would take to truly DEMILITARIZE Afghanistan:

DRONES
Drones are a plague that dash any hope of peace -- not just in Afghanistan, but everywhere in the world. If you only do one thing on #AfghanistanTuesday, please dig into this problem and try to find a way to be part of the resistance to drones.

Tweet with the tag(s): #drones ... #warcrimes

DETENTION
The U.S. and NATO have created a detention mess in Afghanistan that has all the inhumane and lawless features of Guantanamo but is about 100 times as large. You can be part of the movement to end indefinite detetention and torture, and restore rule of law and due process.

Tweet with the tag(s): #Bagram ... #Guantanamo ... #indefinitedetention ... #closeGITMO ... #torture ... #habeas ... #dueprocess ... #humanrights

MERCENARIES/CONTRACTORS
Part and parcel of the U.S./NATO "nation-building" model in Afghanistan is the reliance of vast numbers of security contractors. These contractors -- really thinly disguised mercenaries -- are uncontrollable and lawless, and impose a layer of violence and menace on Afghanistan society that goes surpasses that created by the military.

Tweet with the tag(s): #mercenaries ... #contractors

TRAINERS
The biggest lie of the U.S./NATO endgame in Afghanistan is that the trouble ends when combat troops leave; the remaining presence will "just" be "trainers." As anyone familiar with the U.S. interference in Latin America and the legacy of pain and death of the School of the Americas knows, U.S./NATO training operations threaten to propel the agony in Afghanistan for at least another generation.

Tweet with the tag(s): #SOA ... #specialforces

BASES
The late Chalmers Johnson made it clear that the proliferation of over 700 military bases is the fundamental way that U.S. militarism is propelled in the world. Despite the talk of withdrawal of combat troops, the U.S./NATO base infrastructure in Afghanistan is an enormous obstacle to the decrease in militarization there.

Tweet with the tag(s): #baseworld

Start your #AfghanistanTuesday tweeting NOW!


Related posts

It's not enough to just pull U.S. combat troops out of Afghanistan - we need to ground the drones, clear the prisons we've filled with detainees, remove the bases, get rid of the contractors, stop the training activities -- DEMILITARIZE Afghanistan!

(See DEMILITARIZE Afghanistan)







You don't need to be in Chicago to protest NATO. I'm asking everybody -- and especially everyone who has ever participated in #AfghanistanTuesday -- to help protest NATO from wherever they are. We want to build a crescendo of opposition that culminates in a clear message to NATO on May 20/21 when they meet in Chicago: #DEMILITARIZEafghanistan!

(See #DEMILITARIZEafghanistan )


Weekly tweeting about Afghanistan has been quiet for a while. No more! On March 27, #AfghanistanTuesday jumped back to life as people started to think and talk seriously about the coming Nato summit in Chicago.

(See #AfghanistanTuesday - Top Tweets - Mar 27 )