i’ve stopped counting

In the wake of the American military body count in Iraq passing 3,000, Bush is readying a plan to be unveiled later this week that includes a troop surge of up to 20,000 more soldiers. The soldiers are going to be used for a goal of cracking down on militias and death squads - the same militias and death squads that we created and armed.

There are so many things I want to scream from my rooftop about this but I haven’t figured out how to get up there yet, so my blog will have to do.

First and foremost, any kind of escalation of war ignores the will of the American people. We voted against the war two months ago, and the staffing changes we mandated took place last week. Tossing out respect for the will of the majority of his employers so soon after an election is a great way to turn a lot of the people who don’t think impeachment is warranted. That Pelosi is able to hint at denying him war funds is evidence for this.

Secondly, this plan ignores the Iraq Study Group’s recommendation of a gradual troop withdrawal. Think back to the weeks before the ISG report came out - the administration was waiting on their decision. For a few weeks it seemed like every Tony Snow response in the white house press briefing was something along the lines of, “Let’s wait for what the ISG report has to say about that.” The ISG basically gave Bush a ‘Get out of Iraq free’ card that he could hide behind and salvage any sort of credibility. Not playing that card indicates that he doesn’t have any desire for the war to end.

Third, we have already tried troop increases of more than 20,000. The only result was more violence and no real progress. If an increase of more than 20,000 doesn’t do any good, how could next week’s plan do anything? Additionally, twenty thousand more soldiers is a drop in the bucket. We have around 140,000 US troops there already. We have 100,000 contractors there, not counting subcontractors, many of whom are there for military action. Add to that an unknown number of gray-market mercenaries. These groups combined may mean the troop surge isn’t even noticeable.

Fourth, we simply don’t have the troops available for the surge to be real. The Army and National Guard are already stretched thin and have been for some time. The 20,000 soldiers will come from shady tactics such as stop-loss, reduction of training time, and recall of veterans for yet another tour of duty. None of those new troops will be as effective as the ideal rested and well-trained soldier, and the incredible demands on those soldiers will only increase events like the 14-hour deadly standoff this Christmas between police and a PTSD-suffering reservist. I’m pessimistic enough about it to expect reports of Vietnam-style fragging incidents.

Fifth, there doesn’t seem to be a purpose for the new troops. The chance of the troops being used to train Iraqi security forces to replace them (per the ISG recommendation) is apparently “off the table”. It seems like whether to surge has been decided without any plan for something for those bodies to do besides perhaps filling pine boxes.

Now, I’m all for transparency in government, but this transparency is the ‘I can see right through what you’re doing’ variety. This escalation is clearly political spin nonsense to delay until the next president comes around in two years to figure out how to get out of the mess, which will probably only consist of airlifting survivors off of rooftops. And, of course it’s war for oil, which is starting to crop up again here and there as the administration begins to run low on excuses, even though anybody in power has been falsely claiming that oil never had anything to do with it.

At the end of last year, the AP released results from a poll of the biggest heroes and villains of 2006. Bush topped both lists, hero with 13% and villain with 25%. On the villain list he even beat satan who frankly should have done better than 1%, considering his experience.

Here’s my prediction for 2007. Bush will announce plans for a troop surge next week, without providing any sort of rationale. This will lead to the Democratic house refusing to approve any increase in funding for that action. As the only 2 bills passed from the 11 bills needed for 2006 were for the military and domestic security, Bush will smear those funds around to fund his troop surge without anybody’s help or approval. The whole surge strategy will fail miserably while Bush’s approval drops into single digits, and pundits will have aneurysms as they realise that Nancy Pelosi (speaker of the house) will ascend to president if Bush and Cheney are impeached.

(That’s of course the optimistic prediction. The bad one involves war with Iran where Israel does a few preemptive nuclear strikes and the US military, already largely in position in the persian gulf, follows suit with an aimless air campaign, knowing that it doesn’t have many ground forces to spare. Iran retaliates by sinking both of our aircraft carriers in that region. Russia and China get involved while the US drops a couple big nukes. Then America itself dissolves into Civil War II.)