It's not enough to just be against the Iraq war.

If you've been keeping up with the intern blog for the last few months, you know that FCNL has been putting a lot of time and energy into protesting the increase of troops in Afghanistan.

I have noticed that conversations with my friends and neighbors around my work and peace activism has shifted since President Obama has come into office. "But President Obama wants to get the US out of Iraq!" people tell me, "The administration that got us in these wars is long gone." However, even when I point out that redistributing troops from Iraq to Afghanistan is not the same as bringing them home, I am confronted with the fact that even among some people in the peace movement, the war in Afghanistan is seen as the 'good' war, and dissent has fallen out of fashion again.

So, imagine how excited I was to read this in The Nation today:

There is significant discomfort with the expansion of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan, and opposition has been expressed by political leaders abroad and at home (including Democrats and Republicans in Congress). This is a time when genuine anti-war groups could be expected to harness that discomfort and build a stronger movement to shift U.S. policy.

So, folks, lets build that movement! After the election, we frequently heard that President Obama was the first president that won on a peace platform. If that's true, then the peace movement has an obligation to tell him that Afghanistan needs diplomacy and development, not more troops.

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