Ignoring the will of the people, his generals, former administration officials, Congress, and the results of the 2006 elections, George W. Bush pushed forward Wednesday night with his plan to send 20,000 more troops to Iraq. It is apparent through the remarks of his speech, that Bush intends to actively engage the Sadr militia in the streets of Baghdad. He is setting our military on a collision course with the Shia in the middle of a civil war. Up until now, Bush’s rationale for war in Iraq has been fighting “al-Qaeda,” and “the terrorists” “over there” so that we don’t have to fight them here. To a certain extent, we still heard that logic tonight.
Bush is now putting our troops directly in the crossfire of a civil war. While the troops are going after the Shia militias, they will still be under attack from the Sunni insurgency. And, of course, the Sunni and Shia will still be fighting with each other. This is the very definition of an escalation. Bush is pursuing a disastrous course of action in Iraq, virtually signing the death warrants of hundreds, perhaps thousands more American troops, with still no definition of victory, no timetable, no end in sight. Military commanders in Iraq acknowledge that to “gain the upper hand,” it could take at least two to three years. That is, of course, assuming that Iraq can be stabilized, and that it is worth the cost of American lives to do so.
This is not a “surge.” This is not a temporary increase in troops meant to quell violence. In fact, the very purpose seems to be offensive in nature. Placing more and more troops in the line of fire, where thousands of Iraqis have died in the last year alone, to reach an unclear goal, and fight an unclear enemy. Our troops will be shot at from both sides, and take on directly the most powerful faction in Iraq to placate the neocon right in the face of overwhelming public opposition? This is madness. It must stop, for the sake of all involved. A President who is hell-bent on ignoring the will of anyone who disagrees with his narrow version of reality. A war without end. For the sake of our future, for the sake of what’s left of our international credibility, for the sake of our soldiers, and for the sake of the Iraqi people, we must stop this war.
Update: TAKE ACTION! E-mail your Senators (you can e-mail your Representative, too, but I sincerely doubt you’ll get anywhere with Terry).
I think Obama said it best this morning when he stated that this plan is a failure to address the real issue, which of course is political in nature, not militaristic.
This is exactly what Nixon did in Vietnam, and yet Bush was likely too drunk to remember that. Seriously, Bush should just give it up. It’s only going to get worse from this point on.
Juan Cole is always a must-read when it comes to the Middle East. Read his take on Bush’s speech here:
Another quick way to email the President, Congressional delegation, even state officials, is to use www.congress.org, which allows composing and sending a single email to all or any of the above.
If we use the illegal immigrants to fight and give them citizenship if they kill an Iraqi then that would solve two problems. Immigration and the war. Depending on how many Iraqis they kill they can get citizenship for an additional relative for each one killed. We could probably send about ten million. Come on, this idea is no more crazy then the war itself.