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Blue America's Rep. Eric Massa went on the House floor and made an impassioned call to end the Afghanistan war.

Massa: Enough is enough. It is time to bring our troops home. More than any other issue that I have studied, sought counsel on and drawn from my own life's experience for my own guidance since becoming a member of the United State's Congress, the expansion of the war in Afghanistan has drawn my late night focus. There in the quiet of the office, I have arrived at the inevitable conclusion that the deployment of additional troops in Afghanistan and the continuation of this conflict is not in the best interests of our nation and is in fact in on a par with the potential error of the size of our initial invasion in Iraq.

Eric Massa writes:

Last night, November 4th, I spoke on the floor of the House of Representatives to mark the 2,950th day of the war in Afghanistan and formalized my call to draw this conflict to a conclusion. As a freshman member of Congress that served in the United States Navy for 24 years, it has been my honor to serve on the House Armed Services Committee and the House Homeland Security Committee, and because of my background and experience, I think it's my duty to speak out on this issue.

To date, according to the non-partisan Congressional Research Service, the American taxpayer has spent or committed $300,000,000,000 to fund this war. That breaks down to:

• $101,694,915.25 per day for 2,950 days;
• $986.84 per person since our population is roughly 304 million;
• $3,947.36 for each American family of four.

And the greatest cost of this war is of course the 912 American troops killed, and 4,198 wounded. This of course does not include the thousands of internal wounds that our troops must bear for the rest of their lives.

My fellow Americans, the time to bring this war to a conclusion is now and we must stand with a clear voice and demand it. The war in Afghanistan has lasted five times longer than World War I and twice as long as World War II. When 1/3 of Hamid Karzai's ballots were thrown out for voting fraud and Abdullah Abdullah declined the runoff election due to the rampant corruption in the system, the world saw what we already knew - it is simply impossible to impose a democracy on a nation that does not want it.

If you can---please donate a few bucks to Blue America's "No Means No!" act blue page where you will find Eric Massa's name added to the list of those that are standing up to end the occupation in Afghanistan.

We're proposing that netroots donors consider rewarding this good behavior by donating to the re-election campaigns of these members who have already done something very politically difficult by breaking with their own president on a national security issue.
If terrorist threats to our Nation reemerge from Afghanistan, we will strike, but we are not an occupying force

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If America wasn't bogged down in the two misguided George Bush wars, all the money that we've spent there could easily pay for health insurance reform for all Americans each year. Afghanistan is a country that has never had a central government, and to try and force one down their throats is never going to work.

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I spent all day traveling yesterday, so I wasn't able to get this up, bu Darcy Burner's keynote speech at Netroots Nation on Saturday night was classic Darcy: concise, but compelling. Especially the heart of the speech:

So President Clinton -- how many of you were here for President Clinton's speech the other night? -- President Clinton did something very interesting in his speech. He delivered two fundamentally contradictory messages. He said, support the health-care legislation no matter what it is. That was one message he sent that he delivered quite clearly. But the other message that he delivered was that "Don't ask, don't tell" became policy even though he knew it was the wrong thing, because, he said, we didn't support him and make him do the right thing. That second message, that we have to make our leaders do the right thing was raw and true.

We can't rely on people in authority to make everything right. We have got to do the hard work of governing. It's our job as Americans. It's our obligation. And to be perfectly blunt, I consider it my obligation for Henry.

The vehicle we have for change is the people we have elected, and we have done, collectively, a tremendous job of electing people to office in this country. We have taken back the House, we have taken back the Senate, we have taken the presidency of the United States.

But that is just the beginning of the battle. There are a lot of people -- mostly not the people in this room, but a lot of people who thought that was sufficient and have stopped. We have to help the people that we have elected. And to be perfectly blunt, we have been asked to.

I have been working for the past several months with the Congressional Progressive Caucus -- eighty-three of the most progressive members of the United States House and the United States Senate -- and the message that I get from them consistently is: "We are doing everything in our power to make a difference. But we have to have the support of the grassroots. We need the grassroots helping to frame the message, we need the grassroots applying pressure."

In the health-care debate that's going down right now, the Congressional Progressive Caucus did something absolutely revolutionary in March -- which is that in March Congressman Raul Grijalva, the newly elected co-chair of the caucus, whipped the progressive members of the caucus and got enough of the members to say, "We will not support any piece of health-care legislation that doesn't include a public option."

That the progressives were able to then send a letter to President Obama and to Nancy Pelosi and to Steny Hoyer saying, "Guess what? You want health-care legislation? It isn't the Blue Dogs you need to be worrying about. You need to talk to progressives, because we are drawing the line, and we are not going to back down."

The next day I heard it being bandied about that Darcy suggested caving on the public option. As I told my friends, that wasn't what I heard. And if you watch the video, I don't think it's what you'll hear either.

[Video from Sum of Change. Mine sucked.]