As President Obama mulls a troop increase, a Vietnam War veteran has launched a fast to oppose an escalation of the Afghan occupation. Thomas Mahany says he’s been fasting in front of the White House since Veterans Day. It’s a repeat, he says, of a twenty-nine-day fast he held in 1970 to oppose an escalation of the Vietnam War. In a letter to President Obama, Mahany urged better mental health treatment for US soldiers. He continued, “Please end this needless, incessant war making. We have long ago surpassed humanely reasonable demand exacted upon the fruit of our middle class as well as wrought excessive death and destruction on unwitting civilians in foreign lands.”