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Reid and Pelosi Send Letter Warning Bush against Baghdad Troop Surge
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) sent a letter to President George “LBJ” Bush warning him against sending more troops to Iraq-Nam. They noted that this tactic (it isn’t a strategy, kids) hasn’t worked on the two other occasions it was tried and that a great many military leaders doubt it will work. While they can’t really stop him, they have made it clear with their letter that Mr. Bush owns the surge approach and all the fatalities and failures that will follow from it will be his fault alone.
The most significant paragraph, which suggests the Democrats have evolved into the phylum of vertebrata, reads:
Surging forces is a strategy that you have already tried and that has already failed. Like many current and former military leaders, we believe that trying again would be a serious mistake. They, like us, believe there is no purely military solution in Iraq. There is only a political solution. Adding more combat troops will only endanger more Americans and stretch our military to the breaking point for no strategic gain. And it would undermine our efforts to get the Iraqis to take responsibility for their own future. We are well past the point of more troops for Iraq.
Leaks from the White House and the Pentagon have confirmed that the president will present a strategy later this week that will call for an increase of troops in Iraq of up to 40,000 and increased development spending in Iraq-Nam. The options have been reduced to “go big, go long or go home.” Yet even by the military’s own newly drafted doctrine, 20-25 troops are needed in a counter-insurgency for every 1,000 people in the affected region. Since Baghdad has 5 million or so souls, the new doctrine calls for 100,000 troops in the Iraqi capital. With over 26 million Iraqis total (according to the CIA World Factbook), America needs over 500,000 troops in Iraq to succeed, a figure that got General Eric Shinseki fired for citing in public testimony before the war. It’s also a figure that America simply can’t deploy.
Since the Democrats have said they won’t back a surge (or an “escalation” to use the term from 1965), the question is what can they do about it. Cutting off funds won’t really work because the White House can merely ignore such a move, forcing the Supreme Court to decide a legal challenge – the very same Supreme Court that appointed Mr. Bush to the presidency after the 2000 election. Hearings at which administration officials are grilled over policy can paint the administration into an even tighter corner, but that doesn’t get GI Joe back home.
The unpleasant truth is that 500,000 troops could be deployed if they were Iraqis. However, in the past several months, it has become clear that the Iraqis are unwilling to fight and die for the Green Zone government currently enthroned. A recent effort to secure Baghdad called for a single American brigade and 6 Iraqi brigades. Two-thirds of the Iraqis didn’t show up. President Bush’s policy has been succinctly stated, “As the Iraqis stand up, the Americans will stand down.” Well, the Iraqis have decided not to stand up, and the Green Zone government is clearly prepared to fight to the last American. The Democrats have succeeded in distancing themselves from the coming debacle, but they still aren’t able to force Mr. Bush to do anything about the mess.
© Copyright 2007 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.
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