Rethink Afghanistan

by Robert Greenwald

Dear Friends, Colleagues and Supporters; the winner is you!  After all your efforts sending around the first parts of Rethink Afghanistan and the petition for Congressional oversight hearings, we're thrilled to announce there will be hearings before the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee this Thursday.  The more people who see Rethink Afghanistan, the more critical questions we raise, and the better chance we have of Congress asking these questions.

Check out: http://rethinkafghanistan.com/?utm_source=rgemail

To that end, we bring you the first of three Afghanistan debates between Katrina vanden Heuvel of The Nation and Lawrence Korb of the Center for American Progress.  Over 460 people submitted topics for these debates, with questions on everything from costs of war to regional diplomacy to the damage caused by predator drones.  Korb and vanden Heuvel picked the winning topic for the third debate, which came from Lee Fremault of Attleboro, Massachusetts, who asked, "Could you please compare and then contrast Afghanistan with Vietnam?"

 

 

 

 

It's clear from seeing all of these submitted topics that people have serious concerns about the war in Afghanistan.  We must pose critical questions for oversight hearings, and we have made it easy for you to record your questions for Congress here.  We will compile these video questions on DVD and deliver them to Congress to make your voices heard.

Want to take even more action?  Vote on the written questions you think are the most important for oversight hearings and submit your own.

Vote on the written questions: http://vote.rethinkafghanistan.com/pages/general

Yours,

Robert Greenwald
and the Brave New Foundation team

P.S. Check out the Rethink Afghanistan website this Wednesday and Friday for the other two debates, including the debate with Lee's question.

Join us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Rethink-Afghanistan/54124414652?ref=ts
Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/AfghanistanDocu/ 
 

In the video... Andrew Bacevich is a professor of International Relations & History at Boston University. He has written several books, including The Limits of Power: The End of Military Exceptionalism and The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War.Thomas J. Barfield is a professor of Anthropology at Boston University and the President of the American Institute of Afghanistan Studies.Robert Pape is a professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago specializing in international security affairs. He is the author of Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism.Carl Conetta is the Co-Director of the Project on Defense Alternatives.Faiysal Alikhan is the Founder of the Foundation for Integrated Development Action. He chairs Pakistan’s International Chamber of Commerce Commission on Customs and Trade Regulation.Stephen Kinzer is a foreign correspondent, writer, and the author of several books, including Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq.

Shukria Barakzai is a member of the Afghan parliament and helped draft Afghanistan’s constitution. She is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aina–E–Zan (Women’s Mirror), a weekly newspaper for women in Kabul, Afghanistan. Dr. Ramazan Bashardost is Afghanistan's former Planning Minister, a current member of parliament and an Independent candidate in the upcoming Presidential Election.Mohammad Osman Tariq is president of the pro-democracy group the National Council for Peace and Democracy in Afghanistan. He was a Mujahid commander and fought against the Russians in the Soviet-Afghan war. His recent publication Tribal Security System in Southeast Afghanistan is available here.Ruslan Aushev is a retired Lt. General in the Russian Army and is Chief of the Committee of Russian Afghan Veterans. He is a former president of Ingushetia.Anand Gopal is Afghanistan Correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor.