More Soldiers? Really?

12/24/2006

More Soldiers? Really?


Paul Munnis


As we sit in a pool of disgust, indecision, mourning, and confusion about what we are doing in Iraq, it seems darn silly to be talking about increasing the force size of the Army and the Marines. We don’t know if we are going to need them or not. It comes at a time when we have extraordinary funding requests for the Iraq War and we don’t even have a new foreign policy which is what our troops are hired to support. The new Pentagon Chief has yet to report to Bush on his findings and recommendations.


So when you don’t know what you are doing then it is folly to bring aboard more troops.


Also, the Congress and the Bush Administration are on really different pages concerning the future of the Iraqi War. The Congress has a mandate to bring home our troops and Bush is committed to still have troops in Iraq a decade from now. So a new foreign policy is to be crafted and the old foreign policy is admittedly failed. Bush is not on the same page as his Party who wants the Iraq War to be history before the 2008 elections come up. There is no sign that Bush is crafting a new foreign policy for his Administration to follow.


We doubt that Bush knows what he is doing in this matter of military hiring. We know the Army and Marines want more troops. What’s new? They always want more. As near as we can tell there isn’t even a mission for these added troops. If they are to be given the mission of becoming the Occupation Army of Iraq, with police duties, then the amount being talked about is way too small and the Congress has not weighed in on the matter as yet.


As usual the Bush Administration has the cart before the horse. To me it seems folly to think that the guy who put us in this mess is fit to lead us out of it. I think he should resign and then we’ll put some real talent on the job.