Mine Enemy Has No Name

Mine enemy has no name

http://www.amsterdamnews.com/News/ar...D=64014&sID=16

by WILBERT A. TATUM
Publisher Emeritus and Chairman of the Board
Originally posted 11/30/2005

George W. Bush, almost erect, smiling that crooked little smile of his that always comes when he is about to tell a massive lie. He marches, but not nearly as erectly as does his wife Laura, who holds her shoulders back and her head as high as a toy soldier of yesterday.

Bush is about to appeal to the nation, and in this appeal, beg the American people to follow in his footsteps and win the war in Iraq.

In Annapolis, Maryland, the home of the American Navy, George Bush has come to convince the class of 2005 to choose the Marine Corp. and or the Navy – to follow him into a combat in the Middle East, which they are already winning, but must bolster in order to bring the victory home.

Through sounds of quiet desperation, the president recites his 38-page report to the American people and winds up trying to instill the idea that America is winning this war, with we don't know who. But we are winning the war nonetheless, and we'll seal the victory by following the course, standing tall, being loyal and, especially, maintaining our grip on the idea that America is strong. Furthermore, we are winning a war that is not defined, yet we are about to achieve a victory that Bush cannot explain.

After speaking, for far too many minutes, at Annapolis before a handpicked group of people who could not say no, Mr. Bush sailed through a litany of unreal possibilities that he has articulated all along to a skeptical, but hoping, American public.

Bush did not convince even those stalwarts of his whose rhetoric and support have kept him in this foolish game of war for the last several years, making America a poorer country by many years than any yesterday.

Mr. Bush, the president of the United States, is a very sick and weak man. It has been proved to him that America is not invincible, yet he continues to spout lies that America is winning this war without telling us what government we are fighting and why.

During the second World War, we were fighting the Nazis, Germany, Japan, Italy and others who from time to time had been conscripted after their defeat, by the German army. There was never any question about who we were fighting. We were fighting Germans, we were fighting the Japanese.

Today the Bush administration pretends to be managing this pretense: Our enemy has no name, no face, no country and not even a religion! Not even one that they are fighting for or can identify.

Bush, despite his attempt at sincerity, does not fathom and cannot fathom how we can fight an enemy on his own turf, and lose, when the enemy, whomever it might be, has no army, no tanks, no guns, no planes, no food, water or an identified place where he can make guns or call headquarters.

The enemy does not exist! It cannot be found, except that someone identifiable killed two 2,100-odd troops since this war was started.

There are those among us who have said, as we did during the Vietnam War, ''just declare victory and pack up and go home.'' We did just that because we did not have any other choice. Most of the American army was defeated by a power with far less power than our own. Now it comes again.

Most of the American people wish to be supportive of the president and our soldiers. But they also want this war to end for they believe that it is enough, already. They also feel that if we have not won by now, with all of our advantages, we're never going to win. And they are right.

Whatever you wish to call this war, it is one that we have not won and that we cannot win because we do not know who the enemy is and we do not know why we have taken this fight to the enemy in the first place. They have not invaded our borders, they have not raped our women or destroyed our villages. We cannot accept that 9-11 was unavoidable, or that the average well-read citizen does not suspect that something strange happened there.

The only thing to be said now is ''goodbye my fancy'' to all the ideas we may have ever had about being able to conquer the world. We cannot even conquer a nation that does not have a name. Perhaps it would be better to declare peace against whatever and return our soldiers to their mothers and fathers in whatever town and village they may come from in America, the beautiful. Perhaps a use can be found for them: Make it in a war for the hearts and minds of the American people, whom they will start to understand as we pledge allegiance to them.