by James Glaser
October 28, 2003

Every time there is a new attack on American Troops in Iraq or on those Iraqis that are collaborating with us, Washington claims it is the work of Saddam loyalists or foreign terrorists. Never is the thought that patriotic Iraqi civilians could be the ones trying to defend their country from foreign terrorists (the United States of America).

It is hard to think about our own country as a terrorist state, but we have killed and are killing defenseless women and children in Iraq. What do you think happens when an American convoy comes under attack? American troops start shooting in any direction they think shots are coming from and it does not matter if there are women and children in the way. Lets face it, when you are killing somebody's wife or their children, you are terrorizing them. When you have your troops all over another persons country, you are terrorizing that country, just with your presence there. American troops are not trying to kill innocent civilians, but that is what happens in any war and those innocent civilians have families that love them and their deaths are terror rather we like it or not.

American Troops are scared and angry over the loss of friends and as in every war the victors have an arrogant attitude that the civilian population picks up on. Remember, there are very few if any Americans that can speak Arabic. Even Paul Bremer, the man George Bush has put in charge of this whole mess, can't speak the language. If you were an Iraqi, wouldn't you take that as an insult?

I know why Washington doesn't want to admit that there is a chance, that those parents of the children we have killed are attacking us. Nobody wants to admit that we are killing innocent people, but we are. Maybe those attacking us lost their parents in our last war with Iraq. Hey, I would buy that explanation. How about this one, people that are attacking us are some of the 60 or 70 percent of the Iraqi people that our war put out of work and they are pissed about that? There are lots of reasons for the Iraqi people to be attacking our troops, remember this is a war and we are over there, totally changing these people's lives. Almost every day in Iraq, somebody is being hurt by our being there.

What about all of those guys in the Iraqi Army that faded away, with their weapons, and went home during the war. Doesn't Washington understand that some of these guys had pride in their country or in their unit? I can not understand how those people in Washington running this war can't see that. Every military unit tries to instill pride in its members. Why would Iraq be different?

I believe that Iraqi Patriots are attacking us. Sure some of them probably did work for Saddam and some of them probably hated Saddam, but they all loved their country and are mad, that we destroyed it.

They are probably mad about America picking the people that are going to write their new Constitution. They must be mad about American companies getting paid billions to do work that they think Iraqis should be doing and they are mad that they can not even tell the Americans how they feel, because the Americans don't speak their language.

Washington would have us believe that there are hordes of terrorists all around the globe that are dropping everything they are doing and traveling to Iraq to attack us. It is hard to just drop everything and go to a foreign country and fight. I don't buy this story about these terrorists attacking our troops. If that was true, every day Washington would have a new list of names and their country of origin posted in the media, showing us who they picked up the day before. Sure people in neighboring countries that hate our country might come to Iraq for a shot at us, but they would be the exception. If the Iraqis don't like us being there, they won't like terrorists being there either.

Even if you are the most evil terrorist in the world, if you don't speak one of the languages spoken in Iraq, you are going to stay home. If there were as many terrorists as Washington would have us believe there are, American citizens would be getting killed every day all over this world.

Sure scaring Americans with talk of terrorism and terroristic threats has kept George Bush high in the polls for a couple years now, but that calling wolf is wearing thin. We attacked Iraq because of fear. George built up Saddam Hussein and Iraq into a world power that could take us on and Saddam in truth was just a cheap thug and Iraq was a pitiful little country we have made worse.

We have killed thousands, bombed the heck out of everything we didn't bomb in the first Gulf War and now because of Bush's pride, we are stuck there without enough troops to do the job right.

We didn't have enough troops to start with and we had no plan for what is going on now. Washington had us believing that the Iraqi people would roll over and shower us with praise for destroying their country.

Even if we wanted to finish the job now, we don't have enough troops to do it. We are using National Guard and Reserve Troops for an operation they should never have been in. Those troops are just what their names imply. They are the troops of last resort, when we are getting our butts kicked. Right here in Minnesota, we have more National Guard Troops from our state deployed overseas than any time since World War 2. In Iraq, because we didn't have enough active duty Army troops to even start this war, we used our Reserves first, now what are we going to do? What else can we do, we have to keep our troops in Iraq much longer than we thought, as we don't have anyone to replace them with. Iraq is only going to get worse.

We are fighting people in Iraq that are defending their homeland. We have tried that before and we have lost. We can win this war in Iraq, but way more American and Iraqi blood will flow, terrorism will rise, and America will be hurt.

I say, Walk Away and tell the world we screwed up. Saddam and Iraq were not the threat we thought they were. Sure we will look bad, but do you think we are going to look better after a few more years of killing innocent people who are trying to defend their country? If we don't walk away now, we will walk away later. Any way you look at it, when we leave, Iraq will fall into chaos. Those people in Iraq that have now tasted some freedom will never allow Saddam back in, nor will they allow American puppets to rule them either.

Today President Bush was talking about all the killing in Baghdad with the five bombings on Monday. George said those killings prove that we are being successful and that the terrorists are getting desperate. He went on to say that those attacking us hate freedom. Having a 150,000 foreign military troops that are armed to the teeth in your country, is not freedom. Having a group of rich and powerful people, many of who have been out of Iraq for twenty to thirty years, picked by the United States, to design your countries Constitution, is not freedom. Having countries all around the world loaning money to your country to fix up what the United States has destroyed and setting the terms for those loans without your impute, is not freedom. I don't think George Bush understands what freedom is.