Fighting Yesterdays’ Battles Today: More troops warranted once, but no longer.

(NOTE: Register to post comments and receive e-mail notification every time this Blog is updated!)

Before the invasion of Iraq, Secretary of State and former Commander of coalition forces in “Gulf War I”, Colin Powell, when suggesting the number of troops needed to invade Iraq, invoked what he called The Pottery Barn Rule: “You break it; you own it.” Famously, head of the United States Army General Eric Shinseki testified before Congress that he believed the invasion of Iraq would require “several hundred thousand troops“. Secretary of Defense at the time Donald Rumsfeld dismissed the very idea, calling the number “far from the mark“, finding it difficult to believe it would require “more troops to secure the country than it took to invade it”, followed by prematurely announcing Shinseki’s retirement as a way of diminishing the Generals opinion, suggesting the General was being “overly cautious” in his final days of command.

For literally years, the public was urging President Bush to send more troops into Iraq before it was too late and the insurgency swelled out of control. But President Bush refused, citing that he was following the lead of his generals on the ground. “If the General’s on the ground ask for more troops, they’ll get more troops” he assured us. In fact, the Generals WERE asking for more troops, but an escalation of the war in Iraq at a time when President Bush was running for re-election by telling us how well things were going there would have tanked his campaign.

More widely reported online than in the mainstream media (MSM), former Viceroy in Iraq “L. Paul Bremer” asked President Bush to send additional troops back in 2004 (while publicly denying the need for more troops) to help secure the country, but President Bush, running for re-election, refused.

In 2005, the “more troops” question was more a matter of debate (would it help, would it hurt?). 3,700 additional troops were sent into Baghdad last July in a futile attempt to restore order to Iraq’s most out-of-control city (where nearly a 1/4 of the country’s population lives). Instead, the insertion of more troops had the OPPOSITE effect, resulting in the “rising insurgency” that we hear about today and fatalities increasing 20%. The question as to whether sending more troops was a “good or bad idea” seemed to be closed. The Generals, whom President Bush told us didn’t want more troops when they really did, are now telling him “No, do NOT send more troops. Additional troops at this point won’t help and may even make things worse.” Or perhaps I should say TOLD him, because when the Generals started to publicly oppose him, he simply swaped them out for Generals that didn’t: Lieutenant Gen. David Petraeus and Admiral William Fallon of the Navy to lead the ground war in Iraq. Yes, you read that right.

We no longer have the 20-40 thousand troops President Bush is asking for with this surge. In fact, the actual number may be as small as “9.000 additional troops“. The ONLY way President Bush can INCREASE the number of troops in Iraq over what is there now is to ONCE AGAIN EXTEND THE TOURS OF DUTY FOR EXISTING TROOPS AND CONTINUE TO HOLD THEM THERE LONG AFTER THEIR TOURS HAVE ENDED. Every troop that comes home is one more service man/woman you must replace. If 2,000 troops were allowed to come home, the size of your “surge” is diminished by that number. As such, some troops will continue to be held in involuntary servitude, enduring their THIRD or even FOURTH tours of duty. (Hope you’re not expecting Daddy or Mommy home before 2009). President Bush is just waiting out the clock, leaving it up to the next President to withdraw the troops and lay the blame of Iraq’s failure at the next President’s feet. With his approval rating at yet another all-time low of just 30%, that successor is more than likely to be a Democrat… upon whom the Republicans will unfairly savage for “loosing the war”.

I want to take a second to tell you a little “lesson story” I learned as a kid and have remembered my entire life:

A young boy went to the circus. There, he sees a huge elephant held in place with just a small chain. He asked the elephant’s handler, “How do you keep that big elephant from running away with such a tiny little chain?” “Well,” said the handler, “when the elephant was very young, that tiny chain was all we needed. The young elephant pulled and pulled at the chain all day long, but was unable to break free. Eventually, he stopped trying. And now, even though the elephant is very big, he no longer tries to break free.”

What this little proverb explains is that the time to ensure order is BEFORE things get out of control. The time to secure Iraq by sending in more troops has passed. It only takes a tiny puff to blow out a candle, but once the house catches fire, the blaze has the potential to rage out of control to the point where no number of firemen can stop it.

This is a lesson that President Bush and his stanchest believers have yet to learn. They are always trying to win YESTERDAYS’ battle TODAY, “locking the barn door after the horse gets out” (a Southern parlance the President might better understand). Bush’s invasion of Iraq is a misguided over-reaction to his failure to prevent the deaths of 3,000 Americans on 9/11, trying to prevent the NEXT 9/11, using the blood of our soldiers to take out a family enemy. Now he’s trying to “win” the invasion of Iraq by sending in troops today that he should have sent in yesterday. That “small chain” or “puff of air” he could of used yesterday won’t be enough today. A LOT of people are about to die. If history has taught us anything, most likely around the time President Bush goes on his month long vacation in August (see: ”9/11″ and “Katrina”).

PS: Photos of the Week:

#1: Former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, rather than pass the gavel to incoming Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (as is the tradition), instead sits in the back, looking on, pouting like a child.

#2: I don’t think it is a coincidence that the price of oil plummeted to its lowest level in 18 months the same day the new Democratic Congress took over.

This entry was posted on January 8, 2007 at 1:33 am and is filed under Political News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.