Co-written with James Boyce.
According to numerous reports, in the next few days President Bush will announce an escalation that will send an additional 30,000 or more men and women to serve in Iraq. Some reports indicate that as many as 70,000 additional troops will be on the ground in Iraq by the middle of next year.
Shockingly, three years after the invasion, the total number of men and women in uniform in Iraq could now be 200,000 soldiers. As part of this escalation, President Bush will also seek to permanently increase the size of the United States Army and the Marine Corps reversing a trend to a smaller full time military that has been three decades in the making.
President Bush will call for these additional men and women to serve another tour in Iraq despite the fact that many will have already have served one or more tours of duty there. The rest will be new recruits, young men and women as young as eighteen years of age. Bush will say the need for this “surge” is urgent – and it is, to Bush. As we have learned time and time again over the past few years, Bush urgencies are often different from “reality-based” urgencies: Administration Official: Troop Escalation ‘More Of A Political Decision Than A Military One’
Tag Archives: Iraq War
The Salvador Option
The “Salvador Option” — Will they start using it here?
Go read Newsweek, January 9, 2005, The Salvador Option.
Now, NEWSWEEK has learned, the Pentagon is intensively debating an option that dates back to a still-secret strategy in the Reagan administration’s battle against the leftist guerrilla insurgency in El Salvador in the early 1980s. Then, faced with a losing war against Salvadoran rebels, the U.S. government funded or supported “nationalist” forces that allegedly included so-called death squads directed to hunt down and kill rebel leaders and sympathizers.
. . . Following that model, one Pentagon proposal would send Special Forces teams to advise, support and possibly train Iraqi squads, most likely hand-picked Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Shiite militiamen, to target Sunni insurgents and their sympathizers, even across the border into Syria, according to military insiders familiar with the discussions.
Now, almost 11 months later, we begin to see the policy in action.
Blog Fight II
Confederate Yankee: A Challenge to Dave.
Here is my reply:
A Question About Withdrawal From Iraq
I have a question for those who advocate that we “just leave” Iraq: We wrongly invaded, destroyed their infrastructure and killing hundreds of thousands. Do we pay reparations? Do we pay to rebuild the infrastructure of Iraq? Do we pay death benefits to the families? What TERMS do we offer to end the war? (If you think that wars just end when one side decides to “just leave” I suggest opening a history book.)
Do we prosecute the people who started the war? What do we do if Iran and their Taliban-like government ends up in control of the region?
What Do We Do About Iraq?
I think it is urgent that the US not have invaded Iraq. We should do absolutely everything we can to prevent the United States from having invaded Iraq. But since the U.S. already did I think that the people who engineered that invasion should be brought before the World Court and hung for the crime of committing aggressive war. Just as after WWII the world needs to SEE that this is what happens to people who start wars. And I think the entire “conservative movement” machine with its corrupt DeLay/Norquist/Reed/Abramoff lobbying/funding should be dismantled and prosecuted and imprisoned. I think democracy demands this.
That said, what do we do now? Iraq is really a no-win situation, for millions and millions of people. So looking at what should be done about Iraq I think we need to undertand that the reality is that none of us have any say over what will happen. And another reality to consider: Bush is getting ready to cut and run and retreat because The Party sees a late-2006 “War is Over” announcement as a way to keep power.
Again — anything you or I say should happen is not relevant to what will happen. It is simply blowing hot air into the wind and nothing more.