In September 2001, Rep. Barbara Lee was the only lawmaker in either chamber of Congress to vote against the 2001 resolution [belatedly] authorizing the "use of force" in Afghanistan.Today [after the Obama administration's extrajudicial killing of Osama], she is a leading advocate for the immediate withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. She is also for repealing the authorization that grants a president the authority to use force without a formal "declaration of war" issued by Congress.
“While the head of al-Qaeda is no longer around, we have to really address the root causes of terrorism and understand that we have to refocus our resources and our strategy in a way that begins to get us out of Afghanistan,” Lee says. Democracy Now! also speaks to filmmaker Robert Greenwald about his "Rethink Afghanistan" campaign and journalist Anand Gopal, reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan. More