by James Glaser
June 6, 2005

Killing children, be them Iraqi, Afghani or American is wrong and so is the killing of innocent adults.

America felt righteous indignation after the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Now I think we can all agree that the Pentagon was a legitimate target in a war and as such we should have had some sort of security, but it is way too far of a stretch to claim the same about the World Trade Center. Those who died in New York were "innocent blood."

So America got mad, and even though no country attacked us, we felt compelled to attack somebody. At that time we didn't realize that those who attacked us were actually criminals and that they had no land we could take from them. Attacking Afghanistan was akin to someone attacking America because of something the mafia did.

Now, 4 ½ years later we can look at the score card and see that we lost about 2700+, totally innocent people in that September 11th attack on our nation. It is really hard to put a number on it, but I doubt if anyone would disagree that we have now killed at least 10 times that number of innocent people in Iraq and Afghanistan. If life was like an old Nazi war movie, we would have killed enough to satisfy even the most sadistic Gestapo Officer.

On top of all the innocents we have killed, we have maimed untold thousands of totally innocent human beings.

Now I am not talking about Iraqi soldiers (Maybe 30,000 dead) or the Taliban fighters we killed, No, I am talking about the women, children, the aged, the infirmed, the mentally retarded, hospital workers and clergy we killed in our desire for revenge and it makes me sick.

We have millions in America trying to stop abortions and we have literally blown fetuses out of the bellies of women in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yes, I know nobody wants to think about things like that, but we should. Remember the boy whose arms we blew off? Do you think he was the only one?

Our own troops are coming home with horrible terrible wounds and we have the very best medical facilities on earth, can you imagine the pain and suffering Iraqi children feel with almost no medical facilities and probably no pain medication? Their hospitals must be filled with the screams of the Innocent victims of this war.

Some how Washington has decided that our right to go after terrorists is greater than innocent Iraqi children's right to life. I could understand if we killed the "few" to save the "many," but the numbers no longer work if you want to use that argument. We have inflicted at least Ten September 11th attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan.

Innocent blood is innocent blood, no matter where it lives.

I have had hundreds of Americans write me saying that we have the right to kill, because "they" killed our people. Even if you bought that "eye for and eye" argument, we have gone way past any reasonable killing. The shame is, we are not even fighting the people who attacked us. There weren't any Afghanis nor Iraqis in that September attack on our country, but many Americans still feel we have a right to kill them because so many of them belong to the same religion as those who attacked us. Lucky for Minnesota that they weren't Lutherans

Today my country is killing tens of thousands of innocent people and here in America we don't talk about what a crime that really is, but the rest of the world is. You are now able to put George Bush and Saddam Hussein in the same sentence. For years Muslims have called us the Great Satan and now they have proof. America can condemn those who killed thousands of our innocents, well the world now has the right to condemn our killing of tens of thousands of totally innocent people.

Yes, I find that hard to take. I love my country and what makes this so hard is the fact that it wasn't that long ago that our nation was the most respected on the globe. Today it is a different story. Today the world sees us doing the things we always fought against. Or at least the things we said we were fighting against.

Today the world no longer takes us at our word and they look back at the million plus civilians we killed in Vietnam and they read about American troops machine gunning down innocent civilians at No Gun Ri during the Korean war and they wonder why we attacked Panama and Haiti.

Now the world looks at us, if not with fear, at least apprehension. Our closest neighbors, Mexico and Canada could not stomach what we are doing in Iraq and we couldn't even buy their loyalty.

Think how far we have fallen as a leader in this world of the 21st century. The Coalition of the Willing, those countries we have pushed and bought into helping us in Iraq, countries George Bush touts as friends are the likes of Afghanistan and Columbia. One supplies us with our heroin and the other our cocaine. Either one could be described as narco-states There are almost 200 countries in the UN and 21st century America can cajole less than 30 into helping us and I was surprised that some of these countries even had troops. When America needs the likes of Albania, El Salvador, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Slovakia and Uzbekistan to make our war sound a little bit legitimate, we have really sunk to a new low. Some of these countries can't even feed their own people.

There is no doubt about it, the United States of America is now killing innocent people by the tens of thousands. We know it and the world knows it. Somehow that makes many Americans feel vindicated for our loss of life. I know that way of thinking is sick and does us no good and I believe the rest of the world feels the same.

Killing children impresses no one.