By David Swanson
I recently sat down for 90 minutes to speak with six Afghan judges, all of them women, and an English-Dari interpreter, a man. They spoke to me as individuals. They aren't preparing any investigations or indictments. The relevance of their being judges is that they know the law. They've studied international law, and they were visiting the United States to learn about our legal and political systems. They believe the United States is guilty of war crimes.

By David Swanson
The Declaration of Independence is best remembered as a declaration of war, a war declared on the grounds that we wanted our own flag. The sheer stupidity and anachronism of the idea serves to discourage any thoughts about why Canada didn't need a bloody war, whether the U.S. war benefitted people outside the new aristocracy to whom power was transferred, what bothered Frederick Douglas so much about a day celebrating "independence," or what the Declaration of Independence actually said.

By David Swanson
People are doing journalism and the Washington Post is pissed. How to respond? Apparently the answer arrived at by Post editors is to just give up on any Americans who have been informing themselves and target those Americans who believe anything that super important people say. How else to explain an op-ed full of documented lies and published last Friday over the byline of two Democratic senators, Carl Levin and Jack Reed?

By David Swanson
Statistically speaking, virtually nobody in the United States of America knows that we spend more on the military than the rest of the world combined, that we could eliminate most of our military and still have the world's largest, that over half of the money our government raises from income taxes and borrowing gets spent on the military, that our wars (outrageously costly as they may be) cost far less than the permanent non-war military budget, or that most of the financial woes of the federal and state governments could be solved just by ending a war in Afghanistan that two-thirds of Americans oppose.

By David Swanson
Was the United States compelled to attack Afghanistan and Iraq by the events of 11 September 2001?  A key to answering that rather enormous question may lie in the secrets that the U.S. government is keeping about Saudi Arabia.

By David Swanson   (originally published July 2014) 
Kill Team is not just a video game anymore, not just the inevitable pairing of two of the most popular words in American English. Kill Team is now a movie, and against the odds it's not a celebration of killing, but a particular take on an actual series of events made widely known by Rolling Stone.  

By David Swanson 
The U.S.-led NATO war on Afghanistan has lasted so long they've decided to rename it, declare the old war over, and announce a brand new war they're just sure you're going to love.

By Patrick Kennelly
2014 marks the deadliest year in Afghanistan for civilians, fighters, and foreigners. The situation has reached a new low as the myth of the Afghan state continues. Thirteen years into America's longest war, the international community argues that Afghanistan is growing stronger, despite nearly all indicators suggesting otherwise.

By Kathy Kelly  
On 7 November, 2014, while visiting Kabul, the Secretary General of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, noted that NATO will soon launch a new chapter, a new non-combat mission in Afghanistan. But it's difficult to spot new methods as NATO commits itself to sustaining combat on the part of Afghan forces.

By Dr Hakim
"Her father was killed in Helmand amidst fighting between the Taliban and the Afghan/U.S.-NATO forces," said a relative about Gul Jumma, who looked down, shy and full of angst, sensing a future that's not promising.

By David Smith-Ferri
October 7, 2012, Kabul, Afghanistan
At 5:15 a.m., the main street outside the Afghan Peace Volunteer's (APV) apartment is quiet, and the first weak rays of gray light filter down through dusty, polluted air. In the distance, the hulking brown mountains circling the Kabuli plain emerge ominously from darkness. 

By ourlivesourrights.org
How Many More Will Die for a Lie?
Veterans For Peace opposed the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001. We did not believe it was justified. As military veterans, we did not think that war and occupation were what the world needed. Eleven years later in our nation's longest war, it is apparent that the US / NATO occupation of Afghanistan has been based on a series of lies. One of the biggest lies today is that the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan is succeeding, and the American people should therefore be patient with a phased withdrawal over several years.

By David Swanson
Dedicated and disciplined nonviolent activists, and in particular military veterans, are being openly invited to join members of Veterans For Peace in a peaceful vigil in New York City that will as likely as not result in their wrongful arrest and prosecution.

By Anna Berlinrut
September 17, 2012
To: President Barack Obama
The White House
Washington, DC
Dear Mr. President:
He's been in Afghanistan for two weeks, but I feel as though I've aged 10 years. This is my only son's sixth deployment in harm's way.

By Johnny Barber
"We are at War. Somebody is Going to Pay." George W. Bush, Sept 11th, 2001
Eleven years later, we are still at war. Bullets, mortars and drones are still extracting payment. Thousands, tens of thousands, millions have paid in full. Children and even those yet to be born will continue to pay for decades to come.

By David Swanson
Remarks prepared for Progressive Central in Charlotte NC, Sept. 4, 2012
Last week in Tampa, Clint Eastwood proposed immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the Republican crowd applauded. This week here in Charlotte, I wouldn't hold my breath for any speaker at the convention to dare to suggest such a thing. But they would be applauded if they did. 

Although, we still mourn the loss of a great leader, her short life is a bubbling spring of inspiration for us and for freedom-loving women all over the world.

By David Swanson
The United States has about 200,000 military personnel in Afghanistan, half of them troops, half of them contractors. President Barack Obama put over two-thirds of that number there, first with a big escalation in 2009 that everyone refuses to pay the slightest attention to, then with a second escalation in 2010.

By David Swanson
The Pentagon Washington Post has yet to mention Section 1034 of the Defense Authorization Act of 2012, but you can expect it—if it passes the Senate—to show up in many a future editorial, as it will give presidents the "legal" (although unconstitutional) power to launch and continue wars, something the Washington Post adores.

By David Swanson
Remarks from a plenary at the Stop the War Coalition's June 11, 2011, conference in London on "Afghanistan and the War on Terror: 10 Years On."

By David Swanson
Memorial Day is nice, I suppose. Veterans Day is all right. Patriots Day can be fun. Yellow Ribbon Day's not bad. But you will be pleased to hear that on Thursday the U.S. House of Representatives unanimously voted, in pure bipartisan harmony, to add the following gem to the big war-funding, war-expanding, bill that now goes to the Senate: "The President shall designate a day entitled a National Day of Honor to celebrate members of the Armed Forces who are returning from deployment in support of Iraq, Afghanistan, and other combat areas."

By Hakim
Asking Afghans what they think of U.S. Taliban "peace talks" produces answers one doesn't encounter in the United States. Here's a response to that question from Hakim, a.k.a. Teck Young Wee, of Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers.-DCNS

Obama promised no open-ended occupation – and to draw down forces from July. A 2.5% cut is hardly an encouraging start
By David Swanson
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 12 May 2011 19.31 BST
Afghanistan was supposed to be the campaign promise that President Barack Obama actually kept. He said he would escalate that war, and sure enough he did. Is he now going back on promises he's made as president, by proposing to withdraw 2.5% of US forces in July?

By Jean Athey
“Some questions cannot be answered,” my new friend says, when I press him as to what he would advocate as the way forward in Afghanistan. “I am bewildered, dismayed,” he says, “in that things are not going in the right direction for the people of Afghanistan now.”

By David Swanson
Before Tahrir Square happened almost nobody predicted that President Hosni Mubarak would be forced out of office by a movement that didn't pick up a gun. Had President Barack Obama expected that outcome, he might have publicly backed Mubarak's departure before, rather than after, Mubarak stepped down.

By David Swanson
Written for the forthcoming collection, "Why Peace?"
More than any other description, except for perhaps husband and father, I have been for the past six years a peace activist. Yet, I hesitate on the question of how to tell my personal story of experience with war. I recently visited Afghanistan briefly, in order to speak with people who have experienced war. I've spoken with many U.S. soldiers and non-U.S. victims of war. But I have no experience of war. Being in Washington, D.C., on September 11, 2001, doesn't change that; by the time a crime had been transformed into a war, the war had been moved elsewhere.

Afghan Women Behind the Wheel
By David Swanson
KABUL, AFGHANISTAN 
I've been fortunate to meet some very talented photographers and film-makers here in Afghanistan. We're planning an Afghan Film Festival for the United States this fall.

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN 
In honor of 4 April, 1967, and 4 April, 1968, when Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke out against war and when he was killed, I spent my first full day in Afghanistan on 4 April, 2011, avoiding violence and discussing nonviolent activism with those practicing it here.

By David Swanson
DUBAI, UAE
I was on my way to Afghanistan and have delayed the final leg of the trip a day to see whether being American is compatible with not getting blown up. The problem seems to be that, in addition to the U.S. military occupying the country for almost a decade and routinely murdering random innocent people, some bigoted jerk in Florida is creating a big stink about how much he hates Islam and enjoys burning copies of the Koran.