by James Glaser
May 12, 2003

Last week our President, George Bush, told the world that the fighting was over in Iraq. A few days before his announcement he had sent Donald Rumsfeld to Afghanistan to say the same about that country.

There is one glaring flaw in these announcements and that is that those we were attacking haven't agreed to give up. When any country is attacked by the United States of America, the most powerful nation our planet has ever seen, they only have one tactic that gives them any chance of winning and that is called Guerrilla Warfare.

A nation that wants to defeat the US has to be willing to sacrifice many and continue to fight even when it looks like suicide to continue. North Vietnam went right on fighting for over ten years, until the American Government gave up and went home. Even in that war there were years of negotiations between those fighting, to stop the combat.

Neither Iraq nor Afghanistan have had any talks with our country, saying they had enough. On May 8th, just a couple days after President Bush said it is over two Americans were killed in separate attacks in Iraq and US forces say that they trade fire with armed Iraqis almost every day across the country. On that same day an American Humvee hit a land mine near the Baghdad airport. On Friday, May 9th three soldiers were killed when their Black Hawk helicopter crashed while trying to save a child wounded in an explosion.

Just as in Iraq, Afghanistan is still a dangerous place for American troops, who come under fire daily. Although defeated by the Russians in the 1970s, the Afghan people did not give up and fought on for another ten years until Russia finally gave up and left.

George Bush cannot understand you cannot defeat a people that won't give up and you can't say that the fighting is over until those you are attacking say so. George knows Jack about war and thinks he can just call off all the killing of women and children, but he has never suffered the loss of either and has no idea of the hate built up with these killings.

"Kill my son or Daughter and I will get you some day" That thought is going through the minds of thousands of Iraqi parents and when their time of grief is over, some Americans will die and just like Vietnam we will have to decide when we have had enough and leave.

Only the Iraqi and Afghan people can decide that this war and the fighting is over. We have to remember that we attacked and as long as they want to kill Americans we will be in a fight no matter what George says.

Now there are reasons that President Bush wants this war over. George wants all the looting, destruction, killing, and those sweet heart deals with American Corporations off the front page. Most important of all, George wants the American people to think about something other than Iraq, because he lied us into this war with his talk of Iraq attacking us with Weapons of Mass Destruction. Every day that goes by with none of these weapons found, makes George look bad, so he wants to turn that page.

George Bush found out that he could be popular and have high ratings as long as the American public were afraid of something. First he used the Taliban and al Qaeda, but after they fell in days George had to invent the threat of terrorist attacks and Homeland Security. Next we got the fear of Saddam attacking America and George kept talking about mushroom shaped clouds over American cities. Chemical and biological weapon attacks were talked about by the whole administration, but with our total devastation of Iraq's pitiful defense of their country, we are left wondering what we were afraid of.

Now, George knows code orange and yellow, even red warnings of terrorists attacks are not going to work any more. He knows that he couldn't find Osama bin Laden nor Mulla Omar to sign an end to the Afghan War. Saddam Hussein is in hiding and like Osama is sending out tapes to incite those few willing to kill Americans. These three will be thorns in our side as long as we occupy their homelands.

With millions of Americans out of work and most of our combat troops still in Afghanistan and Iraq we can't start another war right away, so Bush needs another fear to feed to the American masses. North Korea looked promising, but they have real weapons so they are out.

What George Bush needs right now is another terrorist attack and soon. There really aren't any more pitiful third world countries like Afghanistan and Iraq we can vilify enough for the American public to fear as a threat. If America has a few months of Peace we may find we like it. What will happen if we all find out that all of our fears the last two years were just a political ploy invented by a President that has no idea of what to do to lead America?