by James Glaser
August 6, 2002

Americans do it all the time. A person new to gardening will plant a hundred tomato plants for two people or more than one or two zucchini plants, both of these are overkill. On our lake, people will commit overkill with a hundred and fifty horse power outboard motor on a 14' fishing boat.

But the worst overkill is the one that fits the description in the dictionary. Overkill- "the capacity for destruction beyond what is necessary for victory by military weapons." That's it, right there, that is what I am talking about with overkill. Americans have become so used to doing an overkill job with their normal living, like cars that can go a hundred and fifty miles a hour and the top speed limits are around seventy. People that build 5,000 square foot homes for a couple of retired people.

So it fits right in with the American mind set that after we have beaten the Taliban and pushed the al-Qaida out of Afghanistan, we just keep right on bombing. We have installed our puppet government, have other countries pledging money to rebuild, and troops occupying every major city, and we continue to bomb what little is left of the country. That is overkill, literally.

We are now to the point that the only people left to kill are the innocent Afghans or maybe some Canadians that didn't clear their training actions with us. We are now in a "State of Overkill"

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, on July 15th voiced his regrets about the killing of 48 civilians, that included a lot of children. He went on to say "bad things happen in combat zones" and we should have "no regrets about going after bad guys"

Going after "bad guys" with a ac-130 gun ship with machine guns that fire around 6,000 rounds a minute and have automatic cannons on board is pretty much overkill, especially when you are taking out "bad guys" that are 5 or 6 years old.

We have not had any sort of major attack in Afghanistan since March, when we had Operation Anaconda and lost several Americans. Major-General Frank L. Hagenbeck, the previous commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan, said that the bulk of al-Qaida and its leadership were no longer in Afghanistan. We know it and so do the British, Canadians, and Australian troops. These troops report that they have not killed or captured one terrorist this year.

Even though the Taliban and the al-Qaida are defeated, it is still the Americans that are doing the mopping up ground operations. There is a Northern Alliance Army of Afghans that could be doing that, but America has to continue to do this "overkill" by using the most powerful army on earth, to go after any remaining forces.

Since the defeat of the bulk of any opposition to our victory, America has killed way more innocent civilians than enemy. To continue this overkill of innocent lives will only make those that we were supposed to be helping, hate America to the point that supporting terrorists will look like a good thing. That is all "overkill" can do.