I am so tired of this. After an election that was as clear-cut as elections are going to be these days, all the powers that be in the White House and the Republican echo chamber have decided that the best move the U.S. can make is to vastly INCREASE the size of our military in Iraq. No matter that we have no idea what we are doing there now. We just need more troops for some as yet undefined mission that will undoubtedly result in many more causalities on all sides, including innocent Iraqi civilians. However, since we have a new cool buzzword that we can throw around, it all sounds very Important, Official, and Planned for Victory. Given how long the last buzzword hung around (“benchmarks”, remember that one?), I seriously doubt pulling some fancy new buzzword out of the hat will make a significant impact on the overall outcome. But it does keep the mainstream media enthralled for a while.
One question that is being asked now and again is, where are these new troops going to come from? All of our military is pretty much engaged already, either deployed in Iraq, waiting to be deployed, or in the short and getting shorter rotation period between their multiple deployments. The only thing that anyone can possibly do is to, once again, shorten the non-deployment time when the troops are recovering at home and to break down yet more barriers so that more National Guard and Reserves can be used as cannon fodder. We do not have the military to be used in this manner! We just do not! This is insane.
I was only in my pre- and early teens during the height of the Vietnam War, so I don’t believe I have a good basis for a side-by-side comparison. But it certainly seems that we are in the midst of the same insanity that ran rampant in the war planners in that little fiasco. And we all know how well that one turned out.
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