Try Walking in Another Fellows Shoes

by James Glaser
December 23, 2004

That's a hard thing to do. You have to try and put your mind into the same "frame" his is in. When we think about our "enemy" in Iraq we have to ask ourselves why those people are trying to kill our troops, when all we are trying to do is help them.

Could we have miscalculated? Could it be that the people in Iraq don't want our help? Maybe the "help" we are giving them is not the kind of help they want.

After the whole carnage of battle was over and thirty some thousand Iraqi soldiers were dead and much of that nations infrastructure was in ruins, we started telling the world and the Iraqi people that we were there to HELP them.

Before that we didn't talk about help, no, we talked about how scared we were that Iraq was going to attack us with all of their Weapons of Mass Destruction. That was the reason given to the world and the American people of why we had this war in the first place. Helping the Iraqi people was an "after thought." It came about when we couldn't find any of those weapons that we thought would leave Mushroom Shaped Clouds over American Cities.

We turned thousands of young Iraqi Conscripts into "Pink Mist," because of our fear of Iraq's military strength.

So we killed thousands and thousands of Iraqi fathers, brothers, and sons who were serving in Saddam"s Army. Along with them, we killed and maimed thousands and thousands of innocent civilians. Remember the young boy, whose arms we blew off as we killed the rest of his family?

Well now, we are telling all the loved ones of all the people we killed and maimed that we are there to HELP them and they are not buying it and we are surprised.

Every time an Iraqi has to sit in a dark house with no electricity or heat, they think about our promised help. Every time they want to use the bathroom, but find the water has been shut off, they think of our promised help. Every day as they smell the raw sewage that is pumped into the Euphrates River, they think of us.

Americans soon forget about what happened at Abu Ghraib Prison, but the Iraqi people will never forget and the people we tortured are on tour telling their story in order to get more and more people to help with their insurgency.

Shoot a soldier or kill him and that is an act of war and he and his family can still honor his service to his country. Sexually torture a man or a woman, humiliate them, and you have made not only those you tortured hate you, but every member of his or her family.

President Bush told the world that he was "sorry for the humiliation suffered by Iraqi detainees and their families, but the cruelty of a few, cannot diminish the honor and achievement of the thousands who have served honorably in Iraq." Sorry President Bush, but you haven't a clue of how humans feel when they have been wronged so badly.

Those "few" were actually a pretty big group and more and more pictures keep coming out. Many of the photos were so bad that Washington would only let Senators and Congressman see them behind closed doors. Well every Iraqi now knows what happened to their countryman, even if the American public has been kept in the dark.

It really doesn't matter how many do it, but when any number of American troops start burning, sodomizing, and beating Suspects, (not convicted felons) with the blessing of Commanding officers and Washington, every Soldier and Marine in Iraq is branded as sadistic infidels.

So, when we start walking in an Iraqi shoes and see that he loves his country and his fellow citizens as much as Americans love theirs, it is easy to see that this Resistance is going to go on for years. Those people are not about to buy the line that we are there to help them. By now, there are few Iraqis who haven't had some relative or loved one or friend, killed, maimed, or abused by our troops.

If we really walk in their shoes, we can see that every red blooded American would join in their cause if the same thing was happening here and we would be telling those that were trying to oppress us, just like the Iraqis are telling us today, that you can take your help and your new government and Shove it!


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