Wednesday, January 10th, 2007...7:42 pm
The Zapp Brannigan Strategy
Not too long ago, if you had asked me what to do about Iraq, I would have said something like, “I don’t know, but we can’t just withdraw and leave those people with this mess.” I’ve come around to thinking that the only difference between us leaving tommorrow and us leaving a year from now is the number American soldiers that die.
We didn’t send enough troops in the first place (that is assuming we should have sent any at all), and now the President hopes to stanch the bleeding a bit (makes me wonder about the theory that he is only trying to delay the Hanoi moment until after he leaves office). The conduct of the post-invasion part of the war was screwed up by poor planning, wishful thinking and horrible management years ago. I’m not sure how sending 20,000 more troops into a divided nation of nearly 30 million is going to do anything to fix that.
A couple of things disturbed me. Is he looking to expand the war to include Iran and Syria? It sure sounded like it. Also: did he say that American troops will be imbedded with Iraqi units? There are about 18,000 in the Iraqi army, with only 10,000, according to one study, that aren’t politically tainted. How does this work? Does it encourage the Iraqis to take additional responsibilities? Will we be taking political cues from the Iraqi government, who seem to be in the sway of the Iraqi militias?
NB: I’ve got three friends over there, and one cousin that will no doubt be going back under this plan.
1 Comment
January 11th, 2007 at 5:03 am
From last night’s speech:
“Victory will not look like the ones our fathers and grandfathers achieved. There will be no surrender ceremony on the deck of a battleship.”
No, it STARTED with a “Mission Accomplished” ceremony on an aircraft carrier, and it will end with a lot of needless deaths, only to buttress the ego of a fool.
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