by James Glaser
June 9, 2005

Just last week I heard someone say, "He is only going to Afghanistan." That is akin to saying, he was only wounded.

Even though President Bush and President Karzai both talk about how successful things are in Afghanistan, there is still a war going on there, three years after it started.

Yes, Washington has installed Karzai as our puppet President of Afghanistan, but do you remember why we attacked Afghanistan in the first place? We were after Osama bin Laden and he is still there. Like Iraq we were doing regime change in Afghanistan, but unlike Iraq, the leader of the Taliban, Mulla Omar is still in Afghanistan fighting.

Contrary to what President Bush tells us, there is still a war going on in Afghanistan and there will be as long as we have troops there. Yesterday two American soldiers were killed and eight were wounded in eastern Afghanistan. The Associated Press writes, "After a winter lull, loyalists to the ousted Taliban regime and other militants opposed to the US backed government of President Harmid Karzai have ramped up their insurgency with bombings and other attacks."

The loved ones of those American's killed and wounded have heard President Bush tout the success of Afghanistan, but still their sons and daughters are in danger over there, because they are still in a war zone.

Anyplace America tries to occupy will put up resistance. George Bush talked all through his reelection campaign, about how things would change in Iraq after a "new" Iraqi government was formed. Well, that government did form during the last week of April and since that time, almost a hundred Americans have been killed and hundreds have been wounded. Nearly a thousand Iraqis have lost their lives and many thousands have been maimed since the new Iraqi government was installed.

Nothing will change and neither war will end, until we remove our troops, because there will always be people in Afghanistan and Iraq, who feel that we are the enemy and they will try to push us out of their country.

These are not wars we can win. Nobody is going to give up and say we won. It is not like we can take over Iraq or Afghanistan. These are Muslim countries and to them we will always be the "Great Satan" and nothing we do will change that. If we had done it right, we might have gotten bin Laden and Omar, but others would have risen up to attack us. Just like Americans would never stand for a foreign occupation of our country, the Iraqis and Afghanis will not either. Our troops will always be in harm's way, as long as we keep then in the Middle East, because we are the invaders and any government installed under the shadow of American troops, will always be look at as collaborators.