More troops...more losses.

This is the day we have all been waiting for. The troops, American tax payers, the Iraqi factions and Al Qaeda. President Bush’s new plan for reducing the violence in Iraq and establishing a democratic heart in the center of the Middle East.

Bush is committing over 20,000 more US troops to the ground effort and another carrier fleet offshore, but less American money for nation building. When will he ever learn? War is not the answer to the problem of insecurity. We need to fight fire with water. Clean water, sanitation, health care, education and basic civil security. Troops are the least efficient means of doing any of these things. They can do it. But their primary training is to break things and kill people.

Ignoring the problems associated with mixing these to goals, one must at least accept the fact that more US intervention in the Middle East is not a long term solution. More troops in Afghanistan may have been useful. May have. Let me go on record now that more troops in Iraq will not help. They do however provide the President with the last chance he is begging for to extend the ultimate failure in Iraq to another Presidential Administration.

The demands of the President and his need for benchmarks suggest Iraqi government is not so independent and simply a pawn of the Bush Administration.

Contrary to Bush’s claim, “freedom” is not the “calling of our time”. Security is. The sooner the President understands the value of security to Iraqis, Iranians, all Muslims, Jews and Christians, and all others who share the tiny plant, the faster he will maximize everyone’s freedoms and security.

By increasing US troop numbers in Iraq, Bush has given Osama and his minions another victory. On top of further bleeding our budget and dividing American’s politically, Bush has offered more American targets for extremists to snuff.

If Islamic extremists ever get their hands on a nuclear bomb, they won’t need to sneak it across our nations border. A detonation in Baghdad would kill tens of thousands of American’s, and because we are in a ‘war’ against him, such a strike would be a legitimate attack even given the horror of massive collateral damage. The Bush Administration would have shot down US air liners packed with innocent US civilians to protect our capital. Al Qaida could argue that they would be just as justified to prevent US attacks on the capital of their Caliphate. To Bin Ladin murdering more innocent Muslims would be acceptable collateral damage.

As a result of our invasion and incompetent occupation somewhere between 100,000 and 600,000 innocent Iraqi’s have already died. Why would Bin Ladin hesitate over a few hundred thousand more? Do the freakin math.