by James Glaser
July 29, 2002

Here we have a country, the United States of America, that is having this war on terrorism. There is no acceptable universal term for terrorism nor is there a definition of what victory over this terrorism would look like, but it is said by all those in the know, that we are winning.

It is a given that civilian body counts are not kept in Afghanistan, but are there any enemy body counts? Hundreds if not thousands have been said to have been killed in mass, after they surrendered to our friends, the Northern Alliance. We have several hundred "enemy" sitting in our new prison in Cuba, but are these men terrorists?

Just this week, five American soldiers were wounded and two Afghan militia members were killed after a 41/2-hour battle. It sounds to me like if we are winning, it isn't over yet. This was the fifth attack on American troops this month. A few days ago a soldier from the 82nd Airborne Division suffered a concussion when a bullet hit his helmet while on patrol.

We have made strides though. We have our own American oil executive installed as the President of Afghanistan. While it is true that the Vice-president was murdered, we have removed all the untrustworthy Afghans as guards and now the President of Afghanistan is in the safe hands of American body guards. But hey, we are winning.

I think there were several years that anyone could have seen that we were winning in Vietnam, but we lost. We killed way more people than we lost in Somalia, but we lost. We were all over North Korea and killed hundreds of thousands, but 50 years later we still have 36,000 troops over there and all we got was a truce.

Sure any one can say that we are winning, but when you can not define what a win is, you can claim anything the media will print. I think it would be very telling if there was any way to compute the number of terrorists that we have made from the start of this war, then subtract all the terrorists that we killed and see if we are ahead or not.

Also what about the monetary costs to the American Tax Payer? In just dollars, have we taken away from the terrorists as much as we spent on the war, spent on homeland security, and lost in the September 11 attack? I think on the financial side those terrorists are pretty much winning.

What about the cost to the average American in terms of lost freedom, worry about new attacks, and loss of an effective Congress. Congress has been working on terrorism, as has the President and his Administration. So much so, that domestic problems like medical costs, Social Security, and environmental problems, have all been put on the back burner. President Bush has worked himself to such a point of exhaustion that he now needs a month vacation just to get back to normal.

I always have to remind America about the untold costs that this War on Terrorism will have on the men and women that actually have to fight in it. In the last six weeks three soldiers returning from Afghanistan, have killed their wives. The Army would like us to believe that there is no connection here, but killing clusters like this are not the norm, even for the United States Army.

Those returning men and women will have the rest of their lives to think about their time spent on this War on Terrorism. Already a couple hundred of these service veterans will be having a lifetime of problems because of wounds and for the families of those fifty that have been killed so far, this War on Terrorism will be thoughts of what might have been.

Those in Washington can repeat that we are winning each and every day, because they are in Washington, safe and sound. For all the other people in America and the world over and yes, in Afghanistan. Those people will wonder how any one ever "wins" any war.

This Sunday a woman asked me "why do we kill people to try and get peace?" I had no answer for her.