September 6, 2003 - We are approaching the second anniversary of the attack on New York and Washington. The President plans to address the nation tomorrow night to report on his progress in the War on Terrorism that he declared two years ago. It is time to look at the record.

AFGHANISTAN

You remember this forgotten and unfinished war, don’t you?. It was a quick six week campaign that routed the Taliban and sent Al Qaida on the run. We rounded up a secret number of people and stuffed them safely behind barbed wire safely beyond the reach of American or International law. We installed a regime of our own choosing in Kabal. Two years later that regime is under siege, insecure in its own city and the remnants of America’s victorious army is still losing men and fighting pitched battles with the Taliban.

AL QAIDA

We have trumpeted the capture of the Al Qaida key lieutenants, the dismantling of its command structure. Bin Laden, who was the President’s “number one priority”, skulks in the mountains or elsewhere. In the past two weeks he has demonstrated that his sting is still lethal mounting attacks in the heart of Occupied Iraq striking at institutions that show the slightest sign of cooperating with the United States.

IRAQ

Mission Accomplished? More Americans have been killed or wounded since the President’s confident declaration of victory than were injured or injured before he caught the fourth wire. Saddam Hussein is still directing the war though he has been ousted from his palaces in Baghdad arming his forces from unguarded arms dumps spread around Iraq and supposedly under US control. The rational for America’s invasion has been shown to be built of tissue thin rhetoric and little else.

THE ROAD MAP TO PEACE

The Palestinian President we declared persona-non-gratia has won his power struggle with the resignation of the Prime Minister we insisted that he install. The Israeli Prime Minister who nodded approvingly and said all the right things as the “road map” was announced has ignored the President’s route and continued his two eyes for one policy. The road etched on the map is not even a donkey track.

THE HOME FRONT

Recovery? According to the practitioners of the dismal science the shallow recession ended in November of 2001. Since then more than 2 million American jobs have disappeared. Almost 10 million Americans are unemployed and another 5 million have given up on finding work. Prosperity may be just around the corner but we have heard it all before – in 1933.

Those of us over 40 with memories that remain intact have a horrible sense of deja vue. It is time to steer a different course. The one we will be called upon to continue is headed for the rocks!