On the war's eighth anniversary, we urge our president, our Congress and our country to cut the military purse strings and reject an escalation of violence in Afghanistan.

    Yesterday, the Senate passed $128 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This appropriation could fuel a "surge" in deployment of US troops to Afghanistan; Gen. Stanley McChrystal recommends an increase of up to 40,000 soldiers.

    If the American people had voted on this latest defense spending bill, they might well have rejected the funding. Most polls find that a definitive majority of Americans oppose an escalation of combat troops in Afghanistan. A recent McClatchy survey found that only 35 percent favored sending more troops.

    This widespread public skepticism is understandable, given the war's mounting fatality rate. In August, one American died in Afghanistan every 14 hours. September also took a heavy toll, and 17 US soldiers have already died in Afghanistan in October.

    President Obama has lately shown well-warranted caution in preparing to deploy more US troops, and remains wary of McChrystal's calls for a quick escalation. Still, he has not wavered in his support for the war.

    "If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans," the president said less than two months ago. "So this is not only a war worth fighting. This is fundamental to the defense of our people."

    In the lead-up to last year's election, we hoped that Obama's hawkish rhetoric on Afghanistan was simply a savvy campaign choice, intended to capture the votes of "moderates," who feared the prospect of a soft-on-terror commander in chief. Now we wonder whether Obama has succumbed to his own warlike words.

    Though the Obama administration has rebranded the "war on terror" as "Overseas Contingency Operations" (or - to distance the name even further from its brutal reality - "OCO"), its ill-conceived mission and methods remain the same.

    Truthout calls on the Obama administration and Congress to embrace a firm shift in mindset and engage in the critical thinking necessary to end the war by peaceful means.

    How to prompt this transformation? Last month, Congressman Dennis Kucinich suggested a logical first step toward halting the military machine in Afghanistan: cutting its purse strings.

    "If the Obama administration refuses to bring this war to an end, then Congress should use the power of the purse, granted by the Constitution, to end the war and bring our troops home," Kucinich said.

    As Congress debates the much-needed health care reform legislation, Republicans argue that we cannot afford a massive new spending bill with the economy in its current condition. They neglect to mention the string of gargantuan war appropriations bills that have plagued our budget for eight years. America needs to take care of our needs at home before we continue to pour billions of dollars into an unwinnable war.

    As members of the Senate and House go into conference to decide the fate of the defense spending bill in the coming weeks - and as they consider additional war funding for 2011 over the next few months - we hope they will recognize the futility of escalating violence and the urgency of searching for peaceful means to end the conflict.

    President Obama has called the Afghan conflict a "war of necessity." We entreat Congress and the administration to reframe the official story on Afghanistan and reveal the true necessity at hand: to stop funding directionless violence and bring the troops home.