In 2009, there is worldwide anger at the United States based on years of failed economic and military policy. This hostility is grounded in the resentment of Bush-era American arrogance and a reaction to the residual effects of an unregulated American economy and deliberate lies from American leadership.

In 2009, the “anti-war candidate” who campaigned against and defeated fellow Democratic Primary candidate Hillary Clinton on the basis of his opposition to the invasion of Iraq vowed to substantially increase American military presence in that country. It was reported that 2,100 Afghani civilians were killed as a result of American military action in 2008. The election of an anti-war President was supposed to remedy the senseless loss of human life caused by “Bush Doctrine” policy.

What are the lessons of Iraq? Has America learned that 9/11 should not be used as a justification for aggression against a foreign national population? Have Americans learned that attacking a small radical potion of a population with air strikes which also kill innocent civilians results in a net growth and the spread of Anti-American ideology and terrorism?

Afghan Parliamentarian Shukria Barakzai, founder and editor of Kabul’s Aina-E-Zan (a newspaper for Afghan women), and also a co-drafter of the Afghanistan Constitution, is engaged in the difficult battle for women’s rights in her country. Barakzai responded to Obama’s plan to increase American military presence in her country:

“Send us 30,000 scholars instead. Or 30,000 engineers. But don’t send more troops – it will just bring more violence.”

The growth of anti-American groups is indirectly but inexorably tied to poverty, lack of food, lack of drinkable water, lack of medicine, regional American occupation and violence. It rises from regions dominated by American military forces seeking to install governments capable of subduing its own population, but powerless against outsiders. These political conditions, tied to longstanding feelings of indignity and a lack of political freedom, drive terrorism. Terrorists are not poor, not undereducated, not desperate. The demographic is closer to middle class, above average education and subject to a repressive regime.

There remains a massive segment of the population that not only supports military aggression in Afghanistan, but also the failed war in Iraq. John McCain, who received over 50 million votes from Americans to preside over both wars, stated that he believed that the War in Iraq was “necessary and just”, as told to cadets at the Virginia Military Institute:

“I understand the frustration caused by our mistakes in this war. I sympathize with the fatigue of the American people. But I also know the toll a lost war takes on an army and a country. It is the right road. It is necessary and just.”

If the 2008 American Presidential election was a referendum on war policy, the ideological turn the country was seeking was for the responsible use of the military. There was a recognition that “Supporting the Troops” meant supporting responsible engagement of the troops, not just blind support for killing and imperialism.

The war in Afghanistan is not about the so-called “War on Terrorism”. Obama’s administration has ceased using the term. Though several months into office, his administration’s policy is essentially identical to that of his predecessor.

The criticism that has emerged against this war is that the real battle will not be won with bullets and missiles; that the ignored lesson of Iraq is that military presence does not secure a country so much as it projects imperialism and occupation. In Afghanistan – a place filled with poverty and subjected to foreign military powers for decades – the future depends on a change in policy. In Afghanistan and America, the future depends on real change, and the Administration depends on a resolute public that demands it. If the only voices of dissent are those of people waving teabags, demanding more tax cuts for the rich and more military solutions to foreign policy issues, the country will move in that direction, despite a growing acceptance of socialism in America (likely tied to the voices on the right screaming “Socialism” at every form of social government assistance program).

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in his famous 1967 “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence” speech, said that a nation which “continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” Dr. King argued that “America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values.” America, who has not lead the world in this revolution, now has the opportunity to do so. Obama wasn’t elected to make concessions to the right wing – he was elected to lead and bring change. But when the anti-war movement does nothing but hope for a revolution of values, without demanding action, there comes a time when that silence is betrayal to those values. That time is now.