MFSO Talking Points
Making the Case to End the War in Afghanistan

November 2009

What follows below are some suggestions for how to make the case and respond to questions about MFSO's call for ending the war in Afghanistan now. Inevitably, some of these points also refer to ending the war in Iraq as well.

The most important point to remember is that as a military family member who is experiencing the horror of these wars through your family's experience, you know everything you need to speak out against these wars and to provide an effective interview. The formulations below are not positions with which all MFSO members necessarily agree. They are designed as suggestions to help you articulate and explain your opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in accessible ways that we hope will move many people.

For more explanation of these ideas and the links to the sources of this information (where you can read more in depth about these topics), please see "MFSO Background Information: Opposing the War in Afghanistan," which parallels this document and has more details and statistics.

When we talk with the media, we’ll never be able to make all these points. The purpose in listing them is to address many of the likely questions that might arise. Whenever talking with the media, especially if they just want to quote a couple sentences or one short snippet of you speaking, it's important to focus on no more than three themes you want to focus on, and then try to make every answer circle back to one of the three most important points you're trying to convey.

If you're asked questions about US political issues or something about the politics of Afghanistan or Iraq that you don't feel comfortable addressing directly, you can refocus the discussion on what you want to talk about by saying something along the lines of, "I'm not an expert on the politics of Afghanistan, but I do know that (and circle back to one of your key points)," or "The key focus for us is the occupation is making things worse and (circle back to one of your key points)."

Please let us know about questions that are challenging for you to answer and about effective turns of phrase you use to concisely and dramatically convey our message.

Bring my loved one home now. Don’t send my loved one (back) to Iraq or Afghanistan. (Tell your MFSO story).

1. Speak from your heart and connect your experience to the experience of hundreds of thousands of other military families.

2. Briefly tell the story about how you arrived at your position opposing these wars, particularly if you used to have a different opinion. This makes it easier for other people to shift their opinions.

3. Our basic political unity points are: MFSO calls for:

Pulling our troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan now
Taking care of veterans when they get home.
Preventing future illegal and/or immoral wars.

4. If being in touch with others in MFSO has helped you feel supported and helped you navigate through the difficult waters of military family life, briefly tell a story about that.

If it was wrong when Bush did it, it’s wrong when Obama does it. Military occupation is wrong.

5. Funding the wars is killing and wounding our troops - and the people of Iraq and Afghanistan.

6. Support our troops and our families -- by bringing the troops home now.

7. There are more US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan combined now than during the height of the surge in Iraq.

8. The Obama administration secretly deployed 13,000 more troops to Afghanistan this spring.

9. We want the long nightmare of these wars to end for the families of Iraq, Afghanistan -- and the U.S.

10. The military response is part of the problem, not part of the solution.

11. The continuation of the military occupation makes things worse - and amplifies the population's anger at our loved ones in the military.

12. We don't know what will happen if the US military pulls out, but we do know the US military occupation is making things worse, and that many people in Afghanistan are calling on the US military to leave.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are exacting a terrible toll from our loved ones in the military, our country, and the Iraqi and Afghan people.

13. The wars have killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians and over 10,000 civilians in Afghanistan.

14. We are approaching, in the next couple months, the horrible milestone of 1000 US soldiers killed in Afghanistan. Over 4000 US soldiers have been physically wounded.

15. There have been over 4300 US soldiers killed in Iraq. Over 31,000 have been physically wounded. As military families, we're the front line health care providers.

16. Gold Star Families Speak out members grieve for their loved ones and work to prevent other families from having to endure the same incalculable loss.

17. As Matthew Hoh said in his October 2009 letter resigning his State Department position in Afghanistan, “The dead return only in bodily form to be received by families who must be reassured their dead have sacrificed for a purpose worthy of futures lost, love vanished, and promised dreams un-kept. I have lost confidence such assurances can anymore be made. As such, I submit my resignation.”

18. The VA estimates that there are 500,000 U.S. veterans with PTSD and/or traumatic brain injuries from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

19. The US has a shameful legacy of not caring for atomic veterans, veterans who suffer from PTSD and Agent Orange poisoning from the war in Vietnam, and veterans with Gulf War illnesses from the first Iraq war. We need to change and reverse this legacy.

20. For those of us who are military families, there is no peace. We are living with these wars every moment of every day. We’re living with the fear, uncertainty, pain, and trauma of worrying about our loved ones. We worry, "are they still alive?" We worry about the violence they’re being ordered to inflict, and we’re terrified of the violence they’re enduring. We know that combat causes psychological wounds for everyone involved.

21. Because of the punishing deployment tempo, our loved ones have barely come home before we have to wave goodbye again. If Obama and Congress approve further escalation in Afghanistan, dwell time at home will decrease further, endangering our loved ones physical and mental health.

22. The military brass know that the risk of PTSD increases both with multiple deployments and with less time to recover between deployments. The Pentagon knows we need longer dwell time because the military's mental health experts are calling for it.

23. Our loved ones are being sent right back into combat even though the President, Congress, and the Pentagon know it will kill many of them, wound countless more, and permanently damage their mental health. Let’s bring them home now.

24. Children of deployed military personnel are our “youngest draftees.”

25. Two million U.S. children have suffered through one or more of their parents’ deployments to Iraq and/or Afghanistan, and over 230,000 have a parent who is currently deployed.

26. The Bush administration predicted the war in Iraq would pay for itself. A Nobel prize winning economist says it will cost $3 trillion.

27. We as taxpayers have already paid $230 billion for the war in Afghanistan, and we're paying $60 billion this year. If Obama and Congress further escalate the war, the amount we'll have to pay will skyrocket.

Our loved ones are being ordered to fight to prop up a corrupt Afghan government. This doesn't keep us safe.

28. The Karzai government stole the 2009 Afghan election through massive vote fraud.

29. The Karzai government is widely viewed by the Afghan people as a foreign-controlled, corrupt, feckless coalition of warlords and heroin smugglers which really only controls Kabul.

30. President Karzai's brother is apparently both a heroin smuggler and on the CIA payroll.

31. The Karzai administration sponsored and passed a law in the spring of 2009 making marital rape legal for Shiite men.

32. Why are our loved ones fighting and dying to prop up this illegitimate regime?

33. Even as NATO forces in Afghanistan have increased dramatically over the last year, U.S. Intelligence agencies estimate that Taliban full time troop strength has increased 25%.

34. Matthew Hoh, the ex-Marine and State Department official in Afghanistan who resigned from his post in protest against the war, explained in his resignation letter that it made no sense to wage war in Afghanistan in an attempt to try to prevent a terrorist attack on the US. "I find specious the reasons we ask for bloodshed and sacrifice from our young men and women in Afghanistan.... [T]he September 11th attacks, as well as the Madrid and London bombings, were primarily planned and organized in Western Europe; a point that highlights the threat is not one tied to traditional geographic or political boundaries."

35. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have made the US less safe.

Alternatives to the War in Afghanistan

36. We need to support Iraqi and Afghan peacemakers who are calling for negotiations to end the fighting.

37. The US military spends close to $100 million a day in Afghanistan.

38. The average amount of all donors' aid per day is only $7 million.

39. In Afghanistan, 25% of children die before their fifth birthday, and 50 women die each day from pregnancy-related complications.

40. The militarization of humanitarian aid is actually endangering aid workers, according to Interaction, a coalition of 159 aid agencies in Afghanistan.

41. There is no military solution to the social, political, and economic crises in Iraq and Afghanistan. Continuing the occupations is only creating more resentment, more suffering, and more death.

42. We are not experts on Iraq and Afghanistan, but we need to listen to the voices of family members and civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq who yearn for an end to the wars.

43. Our counterparts in Iraq and Afghanistan grieve for their family members killed in the wars, and also suffer the anguish of not knowing whether their loved ones at the front will return home alive.

44. The people of Iraq and Afghanistan call on us to help rebuild their bomb-strewn countries with job programs, health care, and schools, not occupying troops.

45. Instead of futile efforts to eradicate the poppies that are currently turned into heroin, why don't we try buying the poppies in order to turn them into medicinal morphine, of which there is a shortage both in Afghanistan and world-wide?

46. Congress has the power and the responsibility to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan by rejecting authorization and appropriations bills which include money to continue and escalate them.

47. We call on Congress to end the wars. As a first step, Congressmembers should speak out against the proposed escalation in Afghanistan, to support legislation to prevent the escalation, and to mandate an exit strategy.

48. (Side note on Iraq). When President Bush ordered our loved ones to fight in an illegal war in Iraq, we spoke out. The country elected a President who promised to end that war and bring them home.

49. Obama postponed his promised deadline for bringing all the troops home from Iraq until December 31, 2011, the same date that Bush had promised.

50. President Obama has increased the number of military contractors fighting in Iraq.

P.S. This set of talking points expands and builds upon earlier MFSO talking points, most recently the May, 2009 Talking Points, available in PDF. This version released November 6, 2009.