by James Glaser
April 13, 2004

"Baghdad, Iraq—On television, the children are unmoving, dead in the streets, blood pooling and spreading underneath them." Matthew Schofield, Knight Ridder Newspapers.

Of course Schofield is not describing American television, but rather Middle East, Arab TV. Scenes like that would be too harmful for the delicate American psyche. All over the rest of world, people are seeing these images and terrorist recruitment must be at an all time high.

It is reported that on foreign radio, announcers accuse Americans of attacking helpless civilians, "not even allowing them to move for treatment of their bullet wounds." In an act of revenge for the deaths of four American Mercenaries, over 2,000 United States Marines have made an all out attack on Fallujah, Iraq, a city with a population of a reported 200,000 people.

"When the four Americans were murdered, almost all Iraqis were horrified, and understood that a reaction must be strong," said Iraqi journalist Dhrgam Mohammed Ali, referring to the March 31 killing of four private security guards whose bodies were mutilated, dragged through Fallujah, and hung from a bridge.

Ali went on to say, "But now, we see women and children dying, trying to escape and not being allowed to, and many stop remembering the dead Americans. Instead, they wonder why four dead Americans are worth so much, while hundreds of dead Iraqis are worth so little."

Nobody knows for sure how many Iraqis have been killed or wounded in Fallujah, but nobody would argue with 500 dead and 1,000 wounded. No Marine Combat Battalion can attack a large city and not inflict death and destruction on the civilian population.

Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt on Saturday again defended American tactics, saying that Marines had been fired upon from Mosques and from crowds containing women and children. He said Marines had tried to avoid civilian causalities, firing back in dangerous situations only in self defense.

I have watched the American films of our attack on Fallujah and what I saw was Marines firing mortars, blowing up buildings with missiles from aircraft, and firing automatic weapons.

This is my country, attacking a city, and making excuses about the killing of women and children.

This American General has no idea of what life long damage he is doing to his own troops and all the people of that city. When you are in a fire fight and afterwards take a look at the damage you have done, even one dead child will stick with everyone in that unit for the rest of their lives. Scores of dead women and children will become unbearable.

These young Marines will be waking up in the middle of the night with the images of the children killed in this Battle for Fullujah, for the rest of their lives. It might not start right away, but for some it will in a few years and for others it might take ten or even fifteen years for the repeated visions to start.

Maybe a Marine will be looking at his little son or daughter as they are lying down on the floor to color in a book or to play, they will see them in almost the same position as the child they found dead so many years before and that will trigger a guilt that just won't go away. For some of those Marines the guilt will be too much and they will commit suicide.

I can't believe that this Marine Corps General has never thought about what he is doing to the children of that city, the ones that are not killed or wounded, but the ones that have to help pickup their dead friends and help bury them. Those children will also live with the same image in their mind as the Marines. These kids won't have their minds filled with guilt, no their minds will be filled with hate.

We have now killed and wounded hundreds of Iraqis for each of those four American contract workers. We have no idea if we have killed their killers or not. In fact we don't know who killed these four Americans, but I guess we have had our revenge.

At one time there was talk of winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people. I guess we can throw that idea out the window now. Now all we can do is force some sort of puppet government on the Iraqi people. They will never believe that we are a good country or that we had good intentions for their country. We have now lost this war.

We have lost something here at home too. America is no longer the "good guy" and the whole world knows it. When I was young I knew without a doubt that the United States was out to help those less fortunate that we are. We wanted others to have the freedom we have. I now know that is not true. America wants to take over the world and make it do as we want.

Young people will still believe in our country because we once again force them to say the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag. Oh yes I know they can opt out, but peer pressure makes that hard. American children will still be taught that God is on our side and it won't be until they are adults before they find out who is really on our side.

It takes a long time to figure out that all of the politics and wars are caused by the need in some people for power and money. People in Washington might start out working for "we the people," but soon it comes down to winning that next election or getting that financial backer a new contract. If you are a politician like so many, backed by the Defense Industry, you are going to think we need a war.

Most politicians have never seen combat, so they really believe the military when they say that they try to avoid civilian causalities. Attacking cities like Fallujah or Baghdad, with hundreds of thousands or millions of civilians tells us that civilian deaths mean nothing to our military. In fact we don't even keep a count of the innocent people we kill. These politicians have no idea of the horror they are sending our troops into nor the horror we are inflicting on the innocent civilians in any country we attack.

Our politicians believe, because they want to believe, we attack other countries to help them. Remember President Bush claims that War brings Peace.

Right now, today, there are billions of people the world over that either hate or fear our nation. If we continue to have leadership the likes of George Bush and the Republicans or yes, John Kerry and the Democrats, in the future the whole world will fear and hate us. Our attack on the people of Fallujah is a fine example of why.

Post Script

Washington politicians will continue to tell the world that we are in Iraq for honorable reasons and that we only want to help the Iraqi people out. They will gloss over the tens of thousands we have killed already and talk about the artificial limbs we give to a tiny fraction of the people we have maimed.

General Smedley Butler said it well, "There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is a racket."