Dear John,

Last August, as the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan and the Taliban took power, Washington seized $7 billion in assets from Afghanistan's central bank. The resulting saga reveals military industrial corruption that demands accountability.

Can you stand with us to challenge corruption, stop wars for profit, and protect human rights in countries targeted by the Pentagon and CIA?

After a mounting outcry, the Biden administration last week agreed to release half of the funds. Yet the administration continues to drag its feet, pointing the finger at domestic courts resolving claims by the families of 9/11 victims.

At no point in this saga have Washington’s actions been defensible. From the fraud pervading 20 years of war waged on Afghanistan, to the decision to seize its assets in the first place, U.S. foreign policy has reflected a continuing bipartisan commitment to neocolonial resource extraction and impunity for human rights violations.

Even the recent decision to subject Afghanistan’s funds to domestic court proceedings reeks of corruption. No Afghans were involved in the 9/11 attacks, which were perpetrated by Saudi hijackers. Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, remains the beneficiary of U.S. weapon sales enabling an ongoing genocide in Yemen.

The hypocrisy is even worse than that. Biden not only seized Afghanistan’s central reserves, but also imposed crippling sanctions targeting not the government, but the civilian population. As a result, the New York Times estimated that “22.8 million people—more than half the country’s population—are expected to face potentially life-threatening food insecurity this winter.”

Even worse, the administration officials who engineered these disturbing policies include at least one lawyer poised to reap a personal financial windfall by representing the 9/11 families seeking Afghanistan’s funds in federal court. The dimensions of corruption in Washington compound each other, constructing a whole worse than the sum of its parts.

Are you willing to defend human rights from Washington? As a candidate who emerged from the direct action movement challenging Bush’s wars, I’m running for Congress in 2022 to expose the fraud pervading U.S. foreign policy, and educate Americans about a history that too few ever learn.

Many Americans ignore foreign policy, focusing instead on domestic social needs that impact our communities here at home. A recent survey by journalist Henry Norr documented that pattern even among candidates for Congress, while specifically citing our campaign among the exceptions to that disappointing rule. As an immigrant, I find political myopia more than merely disturbing.

It may seem reasonable for voters to be most concerned about the issues that directly impact them and their families, but that focus obscures a perverse irony. Only U.S. voters have any influence at all over the military industrial complex that subjects civilian populations around the world to occupation, random acts of arbitrary lethal violence, and the corporate resource extraction that has tragically accelerated global climate chaos.

Our race to end the Pelosi dynasty is motivated by more than politics, including a commitment to human rights, democracy, and accountability. Each of those principles are routinely violated with bipartisan support, which is why we so desperately need civilian oversight of the Pentagon, Washington & Wall Street's extended military industrial complex, and the pattern of war, resource extraction, and climate chaos that they together enable.

Can you join us to end the 34-year career of an oligarch complicit in ongoing colonialism?

For 20 years, I’ve taken direct action to challenge Bush’s fraudulent wars. For that entire time, Americans who pay attention have been outraged by Nancy Pelosi choosing to fund them.

While grateful that Biden formally ended the last of them, we're disturbed by the seizure of Afghanistan‘s central reserves. It represents not only a continuation of Bush-era colonialism, but also profound cowardice and corruption. It’s also ironic: the funds had been held in the United States in order to keep them secure, yet it was the United States that ultimately stole them.

Washington knows no shame, or limit to the extent of its public hypocrisy.

That hypocrisy, however, relies on the political deference of Congress, which has routinely rubberstamped every proposed military spending increase of the past generation, while failing to hold accountable agencies from NSA to CIA that continue to undermine the rights of foreigners and Americans alike.

I frequently call out corruption, which emerges in many forms. Its most direct reflection is congressional insider trading, but a foreign policy establishment that wages fraudulent wars, and then steals from governments in crisis while their citizens starve, is no less corrupt. Its abuses abroad are simply less visible, since the impacts of our actions are felt halfway across the globe.

Can you make a campaign contribution today to send to Congress a voice from the peace movement poised to help stop the next war before it starts?

Our campaign is running up the steepest hill in politics because solidarity—either with the future or with other countries—demands it. We’re grateful for the solidarity that you & our thousands of other supporters have shown with us!

Your voice,
Shahid