More Troops to Iraq

So President Bush marches on. Another 20,000 troops to Iraq to implement his agenda. Secretary Gates says no one knows how long these troops will stay in Iraq. Perhaps the problem is not the number of troops but the Agenda itself.

President Bush Sr. had a good reason to attack Iraq and dislodge Saddam Hussain during Gulf War 1. He could have gone all the way to Baghdad and he would have supported by the whole world. But he did not, even though his then Defence Secretary Cheney and the author of current war, Wolfowitz egged him on. Bush Sr. was smart to know that entering Iraq is easy but leaving would be difficult.

Enter George Bush Jr. as the President, Cheney as Vice President and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz in charge of Defense. The stage was all but set for an Iraqi invasion, no matter what. After four year of disastrous war when Baker-Hamilton commission suggest a way out, the President just shoved their reccomendations aside.

It seems that President Bush fails to comprehend realities on the ground. The current Iraqi Government of Al-Maliki is a proxy for Muqtada Al Sadr whose militias are wreaking havoc in Iraq through revenge killings. Many of Sadr's men have penetrated the police force and are killing opponents under the cover of police uniform.

Providing more troops to support this Iraqi government will only increase violence. If anything, President Bush should have threatened to withdraw troops unless the Iraqi Government made good on its committment to broaden the base by including all stakeholders, established an oil revenue sharing formula and disarmed all militias.

The Vietnam war ended because the Congress cut off finances. It seems the time has come for Congress to act again.