Is this a rerun? By Matt Kapko News Editor The Lumberjack April 14, 2004 So it’s been a year since we saw that Saddam Hussein statue toppled over, American flag draped over it and then those ignorant American soldiers scrambling to take it off. I recall hearing that this was a historical day, one that would go down in the history books (and not the kind of history books that one reads at Humboldt State University). Perhaps even those soldiers thought it was the end of this war, but we all know that this war is far from over. The situation is only getting worse. This month brought the worst violence and loss of life since the war began and there is no reason to think that things will get better anytime soon. I refuse to believe the ever-optimistic words of President Bush and his administration. They are liars and everyone knows it, even god knows it. It sure was fun watching National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice dodge those questions at the Sept. 11 Commission hearings. Under oath she said she couldn’t recall whether she discussed with the president the memo that former National Security Council counterterrorism expert Richard Clarke gave to her. That memo clearly stated that Al Qaeda terrorist cells were in the United States at least a month prior to Sept. 11, 2001. It made me think of all those times Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Ford lied to the American public during the Vietnam War. Slowly but surely that war grew into an all-out rape and pillage fest. Is that what Bush is trying to repeat? America lost that war and as of now, we are losing this war. Sure America can kill 20 times as many people as the Iraqis, but in the end it’s the Iraqis who have everything to win and nothing to lose. What again is it that America wants to win? Democracy, yeah whatever. Two weeks ago, during the dreadful 10 o’clock news broadcast from that city by the bay, I watched four American civilians burnt to a black pulp, one beaten to bits by a child, one dragged behind a car and the two others hung over the Euphrates River on a bridge. There was nothing left of them, and for me there was nothing left but pity and shame for what is happening in Iraq. I am shameful for what my government is doing in my name and I pity those who continue to lose their lives for nothing, absolutely nothing. Although I wasn’t alive at the time, I recalled the images of that innocent Vietnamese man killed execution style by someone the American government was supporting in Vietnam. Those images drastically changed public opinion in America. Only once the violence and horror of war is shown on the TV screen, as it is throughout the Middle East and many other parts of the world, will Americans realize that war is wrong. It’s difficult to justify war when you’re faced with the sheer brutality of it on a daily basis. So go ahead CNN, roll the tape. Forget the crusade Congress is levying against indecency. Take it to the people and let them decide what is right. The American commanders continue to say these attacks are being carried out by “remnants” of the past, “dead-enders” and “diehards.” But footage and photos show something different. The attack on those four Americans was cheered on by a large number of people. Imagine the crowd on the Plaza at a Farmers’ Market cheering on and laughing at such savageness. Could that honestly be counted as a small amount of people? The “Sunni triangle” of opposition seems to be growing, but it would be more precise to say it has “no triangular shape,” as Robert Fisk wrote in The Independent. This war was founded on lies and illusions, he wrote. However, beneath the smoke screen of deception there is “one simple truth: Iraqis do not want us.” Home