"Thugs and Murderers"

The president spoke yesterday before a most favorable and supportive audience at Kansas State University. He spoke of our enemies in Iraq as "thugs and murderers."

From the dictionary:

A thug is: A cutthroat or ruffian; a hoodlum.

A murder is: The unlawful killing of one human by another, especially with premeditated malice.

Since the attack of 9/11 reflected the results of the al Qaeda presence in Afghanistan, I can understand that the war that we undertook there can be categorized as "lawful," and the people we were fighting there could be considered "murderers and thugs."

Was the Iraqi leader "a bad guy?" Of course he was. However, I have difficulty in justifying that the entire nation of Iraq or its people were "murderers and thugs" at the time we bombed them and invaded their country. Although we marched under the claim that the Iraqis possessed WMDs and were poised to use them against us, events have proven this to be untrue.

We have killed over 30,000 and wounded over 100,000 Iraqi people, and now much of the world considers our country and members of our "coalition of the willing" to be murderers.

When we bombed Pakistan in pursuit of one or more of our enemies and killed about 18 innocent men women and children last week several people in the administration justified the act by saying we were pursuing the enemy. If killing 18 innocents is acceptable in the act of trying to kill a few of our enemies, how about 50 or 500 or 5,000 people? Is there a line to be drawn somewhere?

While the winners of armed conflict get to write the history of war, I am concerned that the administration and many others in our country believe that because we are the biggest kids on the block we are somehow ENTITLED to do what we wish.

The president, vice president, and members of their administration do and say whatever they please at any moment in what they consider their war against terror. Truth and accuracy do not seem to matter to them, and they change positions so often that it becomes difficult to keep track of where they are at any given time. And because I write as I live, as a petulant child, looking at the

present situation in Iraq, I would like to ask Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld if they considered members of the French, Russian, or Yugoslavian resistance to German occupation to be "thugs and murderers"?

Norman Horowitz

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