January 15, 2007, Damn the torpedoes... and the voters, of course
The President (according to what he said on 60 Minutes) says it's full steam ahead with The Surge TM, no matter what those stupid Democrats in Congress or the vast majority of the American people think.
Here's the thing: this happens to be one of the few areas where the commander in chief power means what he thinks he does (as opposed to permitting a martial law declaration, or acting as if he had). This is a straight troop deployment. This is not a draft: these are troops already mobilized, many of them are already deployed somewhere... many of them will simply have their terms in Iraq extended...others will be shifted from Korea, Okinawa, Europe or Afghanistan. The President's actions of moving troops around is his perogative. Seriously.
At this point, in fact, just the fact that he is drawing attention to this sideshow-- as if an increase in American troop strength from 140,000 to 160,000 (at a time other nations are reducing their deployments or pulling out, btw) will matter a hill of beans in Iraq (answer: not very likely) means that he ostensibly gets a pass on everything else. (We can start, btw, with why our military is so damned degraded that 20,000 troops is all there is.)
The larger question is whether this war should continue to be funded, and funded by deficit spending no less. Or why a President whose focus remains on this pretty hopeless occupation where our troops are more or less acting as hall monitors in a nascent civil war appears to have let victory in Afghanistan fall apart as the Taliban are resurgent... and of course, allows OBL to continue to be out there.
Or, why a President who has used industry shills on the government payroll and funded propaganda to deny the known facts about climate change, not to mention quite literally stealing government money for other propaganda projects shouldn't be impeached for that alone.
As long as the rest of us are obsessed with the surge sideshow... a rather modest escalation under any circumstances, which, if anything just takes us back to last summer's trooop level... we're pretty much where the President wants us. And that is not where we want to be now, is it?
Comments
Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?
Posted by Schmalking Dog at January 15, 2007 5:57 PM