by James Glaser
January 27, 2003

I have seen a war and it scares me, President Bush has not. Not only President Bush, but his whole staff except for Colin Powell are devoid of any practical war experience. I am sure that everyone on board in the Administration has a history of watching every Hollywood war movie of the last fifty years and that is what gives them the knowledge they think they need. Their actions reflect that fictional depiction of war.

I doubt if any of these men and women in the Bush administration have seen the aftermath of just one of our bombing raids on a populated area. I am however sure that these same people believe in the "precision targeting" of weapons. Seldom if ever does the American citizen get to see what happens when that precision is not so precise and it happens more often than we would like to admit. American media tends to edit things that may make their audience uncomfortable.

I feel confident in saying that nobody in this administration ever had to put an American Marine into a body bag or maybe part of an American Marine. Just think about how our government has treated returning Vietnam and Gulf war veterans and you will see that those in charge have no idea of the sacrifices made by those men and women.

Do you really think that this administration has any idea of what it is like for the children of Iraq? They have gone through one war with us, for the past twelve years have seen the constant bombings of the no fly zones by us, and they have also had to listen to the constant American threats about going to war.

Sure it is easy to blame all of this on Saddam Hussein, but the truth is, that no matter how you look at it, America is torturing every child in Iraq. Blame it on Saddam if you want, but those children are still going through the torture we are inflicting. Every young adult in Iraq knows more about war than the whole Executive branch of our government, they have lived it.

It is because of this lack of any military experience that George Bush can look at war as a solution to any problem. This lack of experience also explains why this administration has no compassion for all the thousands of innocent people we will be killing in this war. Have you ever heard the President or one of his staff even mention the innocent people we will kill by going to war with Iraq? It isn't just this war, but all wars have that same "common denominator," innocent men, women, children, and infants are killed and maimed.

We are going to punish innocent children because George Bush has not figured out how he and Saddam Hussein can end this impasse. This is an American failure because the only thing America can figure out is we will have to kill and maim thousands to get our way. That will teach those Muslims what Christians can do. Makes you proud huh?