Calling Bull on Code Pink 'Rethink Afghan' Meme: Antiwar Group Says End 'Occupation' Now!

It's stupidly transparent, but leftist media outlets have launched a campaign to rehabilitate Code Pink, the hardline neo-communist protest group. The Christian Science Monitor quotes group co-founder Medea Benjamin as saying:

We would leave with the same parameters of an exit strategy but we might perhaps be more flexible about a timeline ... That's where we have opened ourselves, being here, to some other possibilities. We have been feeling a sense of fear of the people of the return of the Taliban. So many people are saying that, 'If the US troops left the country, would collapse. We'd go into civil war.' A palpable sense of fear that is making us start to reconsider that.

That sounds about right. The country will collapse without a continued robust presence of American forces. The only problem is that actions speak louder than words. Jonn Lilyea reported on the Code Pink antiwar rally Monday from the White House. And as the photos above attest, the group's still demanding a complete withdrawal from Afghanistan, as well as Iraq and Guantanamo Bay.

And here's the statement at Code Pink's homepage:

October 2009, Eight Years in Afghanistan—How Many More?

At the current rate of American deaths in Afghanistan, over 1,000 additional American soldiers will be killed in the next two years of “hard fighting” predicted by the Pentagon as the next phase of a ten year occupation. Another $130 billion for Afghanistan and Iraq now is being rushed through a sleeping Congress. An escalation of even more troops is pending. We have been given the rationale that the war is to protect the rights of women, but what we hear from the women of Afghanistan is that the ongoing combat in their country causes incalculable suffering.

A majority of Americans – including 70 percent from the majority party – now consider Afghanistan a mistake. Now is the time for an exit strategy to end these wars.

And here's this from the ANSWER Coalition's protest announcement for today's event at the Wilshire Federal Building in Los Angeles:

Here's the list of allied group's at the homepage:

Oct. 7 LA protest initiated by the ANSWER Coalition. Endorsed by March Forward!; Ron Kovic, Vietnam veteran, author, "Born on the 4th of July"; Blase & Theresa Bonpane, Office of the Americas, Veterans for Peace, Military Families Speak Out-Orange County, National Council of Arab Americans; Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition; South Asian Network, Afghan Women's Mission, Muslim American Society Freedom, Council on American Islamic Relations-Southern California, Coalition for World Peace, Free Palestine Alliance, Alliance for Just and Lasting Peace in the Philippines, GABRIELA Network, Palestinian American Women's Association, Out Against War, LA LGBT Greens, Peace and Freedom Party, Islamic Shura Council of Southern California, Addicted to War, Party for Socialism and Liberation, Montrose Peace Vigil, Students Fight Back, National Committee to Free the Cuban Five, Anti-Racist Action LA/People Against Racist Terror, Justice for Filipino American Veterans, KmB Pro-People Youth, Latino Movement USA, National Lawyers Guild, Comite Pro-Democracia en Mexico, Frente Unido de los Pueblos Americanos, Comites de Base FMLN, Los Angeles, Coalition for Peace and Democracy in Honduras, Hermandad Mexicana Nacional, Union of Guatemalan Immigrants, International Socialist Organization, American Friends Service Committee, Resistance Front Against the Coup in Honduras, LA Coalition in Solidarity with Cuba, Iraq Moratorium, MSA-CSULB, Minjok.com, Cafe Intifada, LA Palestine Labor Solidarity, San Fernando Valley Chapter of Alliance for Democracy, CODEPINK, Long Beach Area Peace Network, Coffee House Teach-Ins, Cuauhtemoc Aztec Dance and others.

Notice Code Pink mentioned toward the end of the list.

Medea Benjamin and other Code Pink leaders may indeed by "rethinking" their longtanding calls for immediate troop withdrawals. But the group's original positions remain unchanged at protest demonstrations, the homepage, and at the ANSWER coalition's contact page. No matter, in addition to the Christian Science Monitor, the Los Angeles Times and the leftist rag Raw Story are also spreading the propaganda.

Of course, this meme that Code Pink's "rethinking" Afghanistan is bull. Weasel Zippers frames it perfectly, "Height of Hypocrisy: Code Pink Rethinking Their Opposition to Afghan War...." See also, Red State, "The Sham Anti-War Movement":

If there was ever any doubt that the anti-war movement was nothing more or less than an adjunct of the Democrat party, that doubt has been swept away. One would think that with the war in Afghanistan at a critical stage and the administration drunkenly reeling from strategy to strategy apparently in search of a magic elixir or silver bullet that will make the war just go away that the anti-war movement would have been in fine form. If there was ever a time when their presence might have actually made a policy difference this was it.

However, now that Obama is in the White House the anti-war movement is curiously silent. The noxious Code Pink organization which was more than willing to consign 25 million Iraqis to rule by al Qaeda has decided that the war in Afghanistan, also against al Qaeda, doesn’t require an immediate withdrawal (h/t, Gateway Pundit) ....

The anti-war movement we were afflicted with over the past eight years was essentially a rent-a-mob that never had any larger objective than damaging President Bush. The outrage about the war in Iraq was driven not by any opposition to war, itself, but by the hatred President Bush attracted by refusing to let Al Gore steal the 2000 election. The internal contradiction so glaringly apparent in the movement, that of supposedly being against war while supporting a genocidal madman as the ruler of Iraq, is easily explicable when you view that movement as nothing more than street theater designed to weaken the president.

P.S. I'm leaving my office in a few minutes to drive to Los Angeles to cover the ANSWER protest. I'll have a report late tonight or tomorrow afternoon ... stay tuned!