by James Glaser
September 10, 2003

Nearly two years after we attacked Afghanistan, even the International Airport at the capitol city of Kabul has no running water, Still after all of this time the highways of this country are in very poor condition and the cities look like, like bombed out cities. That is what they are.

When we attacked Afghanistan it was without a doubt the most pitiful nation on the globe. The United States calling our attack on Afghanistan, a War, is really sick. The country had no army, navy, or air force. Their weapons were from decades ago and out 21st century military was something out of a science fiction movie for those fighting us.

Still today, American troops are attacking pockets of resistance and yes, Americans are still getting killed and wounded. Four Americans died in combat in August and several were wounded. As far as the American media is concerned, this War has been over for a year. Some things in Afghanistan are looking up though.

The Taliban are back in the country and making a real comeback by attacking police stations and American bases. The opium trade is back on top, now Afghanistan is producing more opium and heroin than any other nation in the world.

The War Lords are now paid by both the American government and those in the opium trade. The Afghan Government gets their taxes off of this trade and so do terrorists. The Taliban does not, as they almost closed down all opium production, before the United States allowed it to flourish like it does today.

In Iraq the people in Baghdad, the capitol city, still do not have safe drinking water, in fact much of this city of five million people does not have any running water. On average, one American Soldier is getting killed every two days and about ten are wounded.

When this war started President Bush told the world we could do it without any help, but now he is having second thoughts. The United States has gone back to the United Nations asking for International help. If things were going our way we would never have done that.

President Bush and his administration believe that we can attack and kill all of the terrorists, not knowing that with every country we attack, we are making another group of people that want to hurt America.

Terrorists have no country to defend and just like in Afghanistan, the terrorists will leave Iraq until we pull out most of our troops and then they will come back. If there were any terrorists in Iraq, they split when we attacked. Now with our troops standing around on guard duty, they see a chance to inflict some pain our way. They have come to Iraq and will now join up with the "new terrorists" we have made in that country and will attack our troops.

Terrorists don't have an army that they can do battles with. Terrorists have to fight a guerilla war. I am guessing that the Terrorists in Iraq that the President is talking about, are really Iraqi patriots, trying to drive a foreign army out of their country. Any real terrorists, are there now, because they have seen an opportunity to attack us near their home bases in the Middle East.

The are many reasons we are losing this war. First off we are still in that World War 2 way of thinking, that we can attack a country and win the war. Well if terrorists have no country, who are we attacking and why? We are attacking and killing people that have suffered from terror much longer than we have. These people get just as mad when we attack them, as we did when terrorists attacked us.

Every time we make a mistake and kill an innocent civilian we make people hate us enough to become a terrorist and we have killed way over ten thousand innocent people in Iraq and Afghanistan. If it is true that President Bush lied about why we should attack these countries, then those mistakes turn into Murders. You know there are thousands of people in those countries that believe their dead child, wife, husband, mother, father, or best friend was murdered by us,

We are making new terrorists faster than we can kill them. So what the heck can we do?

Terrorism in American is something new. It has been going on for only about ten years and really in the amount of deaths due to violence all over this planet, our losses are small. Yes each and every death was a horrible for those American families that lost a loved one, but what Washington does not understand is that every family on this earth feels the same horror when one of their loved ones is killed. Remember, we kill a lot of people.

There is a reason that the United States is getting attacked now. No, I don't know why, but it is total crap that those attacking us hate freedom and democracy like President Bush says. People in most of this world have no idea of what freedom is, let alone democracy.

People don't just wake up one day and decide to kill themselves in order to take some Americans with them. Something we have done or something these terrorists believe we have done, has made them hate us enough to give their lives to hurt us.

I am sure President Bush and Colin Powell have some idea of what we have done. Our Nation, which I feel very fortunate to have been born in, is not very nice to the rest of the world. We kill lots of people. We change governments we don't like. We back rulers like Saddam Hussein. Remember we paid Saddam for years and years to be our friend, even while he was killing his own people. We knew what was going on, but looked the other way. We have done that with many terrible leaders all over the world.

The summer before we attacked Afghanistan we were giving money to the Taliban. Then all of a sudden we decided they treated their women poorly, like we didn't know what these guys were like. What really happened is that some Taliban came to Texas and when we offered to build a pipeline across their country, they said no. Well that doomed them.

Remember the Shah of Iran? With absolute proof, Iran knows that we taught the Shah's secret police how to torture. We back terrorists where ever we think it will help us. We sell weapons to terrorists and give the money to other terrorists. Remember Iran Contra? We have terror prisons where we can keep someone's loved one forever, with no trial. That makes us a terrorist state in many peoples eyes.

All of these actions make people hate us. All of this adds up and it only takes a couple people from each country to make a terrorist network. Not everyone can hate enough to kill, but some can. There really are not that many terrorists in this world.

Yes, we have to clean up our act, because those people that have learned how to hate us enough to kill, now know that an attack like September 11th is possible. We are no longer invincible and the world knows it

Every American child grows up thinking that our country is out to help the poor and oppressed. We all grow up believing that we are the good guys. Well that is not always true any more. America and those that lead us, got power hungry and we think we know what is best for the rest of the world. Many many countries all through out history thought the same and it proved to be their downfall.

We have a chance to defeat terrorism. We can't do it with bombs and guns.

Every politician talks about military power, more money for Homeland Defense, security, every one is talking about defeating Terrorism, but no one is talking about how we can end the reasons that there is terrorism.

We have to remember that we are the "haves" and most of the rest of this world is the "have nots." The world is getting smaller due to technology. In former times we could rape the rest of the world of its natural resources and labor, then leave the people living there in poverty.

Those people now know what it is like over here and Hollywood movies have given them a taste of what we have. They want it and some day they will have it We can help them get to a better place and share this world like Christ would have wanted. Or we can keep those people living in their mud huts with no water, no electricity, and no hope as long as we can. In the end, they will defeat us and our years of oppressing the third world will doom our children's children to constant attacks by new terrorists until they do

POST SCRIPT, DEATHS IN IRAQ

An American Soldier was killed when his convoy was attacked north of Baghdad. Six Americans were wounded in the Kurdish section of Northern Iraq. Several Americans were wounded in an ambush in Baghdad