5,000 More Lives on the Line Won’t Equal a Win in Afghanistan

Washington, D.C. — May 9, 2017 — In response to reports that President Trump is considering sending an additional 5,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan, Paul Kawika Martin, Senior Director of Policy and Political Affairs at Peace Action, who spent time in Afghanistan in 2010, released the following statement:

“Sending an additional 5,000 troops to Afghanistan will not only put an additional 5,000 American lives at risk, it will also serve to prolong America’s longest war. President Trump said during the campaign that he wants to ‘start winning’ wars again. A smarter approach would be seeking to end them by applying the diplomatic and humanitarian tools his proposed budget would decimate.

“The definition of insanity is repeating the same strategy and expecting different results. Decades of the military approach by the U.S., NATO and Russia and others before have never worked. Why would Trump want to continue wasting American blood and treasure in Afghanistan?”

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Founded in 1957, Peace Action (formerly SANE/Freeze), the United States’ largest peace and disarmament organization, with over 100,000 paid members and nearly 100 chapters in 36 states, works to abolish nuclear weapons, promote government spending priorities that support human needs, encourage real security through international cooperation and human rights and support nonmilitary solutions to international conflicts. The public may learn more and take action at http://www.PeaceAction.org.