Iraq Veteran: Why I'm Against Obama's Afghanistan

By Benjamin Lewis, AlterNet. Posted April 8, 2009.

I am a veteran of Iraq who served two tours in the U.S. occupation of that country. I experienced firsthand the horrors of that war, and like many others, came to see it as nothing more than a chance for a very few to make vast profits in a short amount of time. Now, because of those selfish and irresponsible actions, the citizens of not only the U.S., but of the entire world, are asked to pay for the fallout of war in blood, sacrifice and currency.

But this is old news. 

Yet, even as we deplore the war in Iraq and the unconstitutional actions of the former administration, we are sucked back into the propaganda of the ‘first war,’ the ‘good war,’ as if the Bush administration was so unpatriotic that it had no interest in Afghanistan. Even as we acknowledge that Iraq is a war for oil and profit, we ignore the history of Afghanistan and the oil resources of the Caspian Sea that would be opened up through this conquest. Even as we sit on the brink of a depression we are willing to pour our money and resources into a so-called ‘ten year plan’ that will cost unknown sums of money that we will not get back. Exactly as it is happening in the Iraq war, the fruits of our labor will be siphoned off into the banks of contractors and industrialists, and for whose benefit? Certainly not ours, for we have only some false hope of revenge to attain.

If it was not evident before, it should be apparent by now that Obama is not our savior. He does not bring us hope of no war and he certainly is either not able or not willing to bring about real change. He is, above all, one thing: a politician, and as such he is bound by the rules of his trade. That is his livelihood, so his career rests not on the energized citizens who, inflated with the jingoism of his campaign, rushed to the phones and then to the ballot box in support of his campaign, but by his financial backers, who are already reaping the benefit of ‘bailouts’ and a newly resurrected war. And if anything is transparent it is that Obama’s administration plans to use the same bully tactics that the Bush administration used in order to subvert the will of the electorate and secure the interests of a very few while the rest of us struggle in a recession.

Yet he was elected on a ‘no war’ ticket and in this, if we know our history, he is no different than Woodrow Wilson who pulled America into World War I against the wishes of his constituency and later admitted that it was only for the benefit of capitalists. Obama stood shamelessly behind podiums and promised an end to the Iraq War, all the while planning to launch us into the good and just war against Afghanistan -- a nation that is really not one nation at all, but a heterogeneous population of many languages, tribes and cultures.

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Marine Benjamin "Benji" Lewis served two tours in Iraq and was honorably discharged in 2007. Recently, he received notification that he was a candidate to be recalled to active duty. A few weeks ago at a Winter Soldier event in Portland, Oregon, Lewis publicly announced his intention to refuse reactivation from the Individual Ready Reserve (IRR).

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