October 7 marked the 14th anniversary of the US invasion of Afghanistan. The week started off in a tragic way with the US bombing of a Doctors Without Borders (Medecins sans Frontieres, MSF) hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan. It was the only hospital of its kind serving Northeastern Afghanistan and treated hundreds of patients every week. The Senate held a hearing last week to discuss the situation in Afghanistan. We will discuss the hospital bombing and why this may be a violation of international law and we will speak with Kathy Kelly, who travels frequently to Afghanistan, about her impressions of the US’ military presence there. We also discuss Columbus/Indigenous Peoples’ Day and its impacts on US ‘War Culture’.
Listen here:
Columbus, War Culture and Fourteen Years in Afghanistan with Kathy Kelly by Clearingthefog on Mixcloud
Relevant articles and websites:
The Radically Changing Story of the US Airstrike on Afghan Hospital: From Mistake to Justification by Glenn Greenwald
Why Bombing the Kunduz Hospital was Probably a War Crime by Nick Turse
Release the Kunduz Bombing Tapes by David Swanson
Afghanistan: #Enough Even War Has Rules by Dr. Joanne Liu
Top American Commander Says US Should Keep More than 1,000 Troops in Afghanistan post 2016 by Deb Riechmann
The Obscenity of Our War by Kathy Kelly
Voices for Creative Nonviolence
Guest:
Kathy Kelly co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence, (www.vcnv.org) a campaign to end U.S. military and economic warfare.
During each of fourteen trips to Afghanistan since 2010, Kathy Kelly has lived alongside ordinary Afghan people in a working class neighborhood in Kabul. She and other Voices activists have been guests of the Afghan Peace Volunteers. They share in common a belief that “where you stand determines what you see.”
Kelly and her companions insist that the U.S. has not been waging a “humanitarian war” in Afghanistan and that the U.S. should pay reparations for the suffering caused in both Afghanistan and Iraq.
Kelly has also joined with activists in various regions of the country to protest drone warfare by holding demonstrations outside of U.S. military bases in Nevada, upstate New York, and, most recently, Missouri.
From January to April 2015, Kathy was imprisoned in Lexington, KY after a federal judge convicted her for attempting to deliver a loaf of bread and a letter about drone warfare to the commander of Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri.
From 1996 – 2003, Voices activists formed 70 delegations that openly defied economic sanctions by bringing medicines to children and families in Iraq. Kathy and her companions lived in Baghdad throughout the 2003 “Shock and Awe” bombing. They have also lived alongside people during warfare in Gaza, Lebanon, Bosnia and Nicaragua.
She was sentenced to one year in federal prison for planting corn on nuclear missile silo sites (1988-89) and spent three months in prison, in 2004, for crossing the line at Fort Benning’s military training school. As a war tax refuser, she has refused payment of all forms of federal income tax since 1980.