Afghanistan: Obama's Vietnam?

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Date: Thursday, December 10, 2009
Time: 7:30pm - 9:00pm
Location: RIT Library -- the Idea Factory

In 2009, Newsweek International (Jan.), the Washington Times (Jan.), the NY Times (Aug.), The Wall St. Journal (October), and CNN (Oct.) have all run articles asking the same question. "Is Afghanistan Obama's Vietnam?" Newsweek International explained, "The analogy isn't exact. But the war in Afghanistan is starting to look disturbingly familiar."

Eight years after the initial invasion of Afghanistan, the US government is bogged down in a costly land war, against an indigenous, nationalist resistance movement among a population that doesn't want the US troops in their country. The war is threatening to spread into neighboring countries and is justified by a need to contain the spread of a dangerous ideology. We also have a democratic president, who was elected on promises of ending the war(s), but has now chosen to escalate against the wishes of a majority of Americans. To say the analogy is "disturbingly familiar" is a dramatic understatement.

To date, over 1,425 coalition forces have died in Afghanistan. Conservative estimates accumulated from more official yearly figures, put the death toll close to 11,000 civilians killed since our invasion in 2001. The actual number is most certainly higher, maybe by a magnitude of 10, with hundreds of thousands more injured, displaced, and driven into extreme poverty. By every measure, this war has become a quagmire.

Rather than looking out for the interests of the Afghan people, from the very beginning, the aims of the US occupation of Afghanistan have been to further its imperial interests around the globe. Its aims are to protect and expand US influence over energy resources and military power in Central Asia, at the expense of its global competitors, specifically Russia, China and Iran.

Join us for a discussion about the current state of the war in Afghanistan and what we can do to bring it to an end.


Brian Lenzo is a long-time antiwar activist from Rochester, NY. He has contributed numerous articles to Socialist Worker Newspaper and TheSitch.com on the history of the Vietnam antiwar movement and, GI resistance and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Recently he published 6 Reasons to Oppose the War in Afghanistan.

In July, Brian traveled to the Gaza Strip with British MP George Galloway, former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney and 200 other Americans with the Viva Palestina convoy to deliver humanitarian aid and bear witness to the aftermath of Israel's attack in January 2009. He is currently traveling the country sharing his pictures and experiences.