by James Glaser
February 9, 2005

Remember in that Star Wars movie where the Emperor had this huge ship called the Death Star and all the "freedom fighters" had these little tiny one seat attack craft and were trying to destroy it? Well the evil terrorists the world over, think they are those freedom fighters and George Bush is the Evil Emperor they are trying to take down.

Our "Emperor" just submitted a budget that included $419 billion for the Military, but if you add to that the money needed for the War in Iraq, the secret money for the CIA, the money for Homeland Security, and then there is the money we give to other nations like Israel and Iraq and Afghanistan and Columbia and a number of others for their military, we are spending at least 650 billion plus on our National defense and offense.

I believe it is true that the United States now spends more on our Military, than what the rest of the world spends on theirs combined.

It is true that we sell more weapons than anyone else and we have been doing that for over a dozen years now.

When it comes to the subject of war and killing, we are the experts. Every year we invest billions of dollars and we have thousands of people working on making weapons that kill better than any produced in history.

So, just maybe it isn't their hate of freedom that makes us a target. The more successful George Bush becomes at making other nations our vassal states, the more we will have to fear the "rebellion."

Americans have always loved the underdog. We want the little guy to win and we are no longer that little guy. Now we are the Russians, or the Nazis, or Imperial Rome. America is the evil that every freedom loving man or woman wants to take on.

It doesn't matter that we know we are the good guys and all we want to do is help other people, because we have gotten too big for that. George Bush tries to paint Iran, Syria, and North Korea as EVIL. That no longer works. The world knows that these three countries are really pitiful third world nations. Bush painted Saddam and Iraq as evil and we found and the world saw, that Saddam and his military were really nothing compared to our Military Machine.

Think back to that Star Wars movie and remember what the Empire's troops looked like. They had those big white helmets, they all looked the same because of the dark face shield. Look at American troops today. We wear World War II Nazi look alike helmets and now we have those Star Wars looking night vision eye pieces that cover part of our troops faces. American troops look sinister, maybe not to us, but to some third world citizen who doesn't even have electricity, let alone a computer, we are closer to alien warriors than what they think of as soldiers. Our technology puts us in a different class of warrior and we have become something to fear.

When the whole world fears us, we will have totally lost our war on terrorism. In fact much of the world looks at us as the terrorists and those that attacked us on September 11th as the Freedom Fighters. George Bush is now thought of, by the rest of the world, to be the biggest impediment to peace.

I hope you know that there are many nations who have not been to war since 1945 when the Second World War ended. Germany and Japan are two of them. They learned that by attacking others, their country was almost destroyed. We haven't learned that... yet.

When America talks about Peace, the rest of the world knows that we have no understanding of what that is. The United States of America has been in an almost constant state of conflict, for over 60 years.

We have had wars with Germany and Japan, all across Europe and the South Pacific. There was Italy, North Africa, Cuba, Thailand, The Iranian, and Yemen &Indian Ocean Operation of 1978 ­ 1981. Also Lebanon, the Libyan Expedition, Persian Gulf, and Operation Sharp Eagle—in Liberia 1990 - 91.

In 1994 we had Operation Distant Runner in Rwanda and then there was the Taiwan Straits, Quemoy & Matsu Islands, Vietnam, Congo, Dominican Republic, Korea, Cambodia, and the Mayaquez Operation.

Also El Salvador, Lebanon again, Grenada, Libya again, the Persian Gulf, Panama, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Iraq, a couple of times, Afghanistan, Kosovo and who knows how many secret wars we have been in?

The world knows our economy is based on war and killing and our military. The only people fooled are the American people and they won't be for much longer.

It is hard to admit that people don't like you, but many Americans are starting to realize that our nation is feared, not liked. That has happened to every power that has tried to take over the world by force. George Bush thinks that we can hide our intentions behind words like, elections, freedom, and democracy.

The American people still think we have the best of intentions for all the pitiful people we are trying to liberate, but like every power before us, we kill way too many innocent people in the process to gain either love or respect from those we are trying to help.

To have our country at peace or to even understand what peace is, we will first have to live it for a while and we have not done that in generations.