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If several hundred thousand were required to keep Iraq from decending into the mess we're in now, it will take far more than that to dig us out from it now. 20,000 troops are a drop in the bucket; the best we can hope for are short-term successes in certain neighborhoods, but one Friedman Unit from now, we'll all be asking what this 'surge' actually accomplished.
It will accomplish a few things. It will extend tours for troops already on extended tours. It will draw more National Guard and Reserve units into the war, thus degrading our response time to emergencies over here that much more. It will probably break our Army and Marine Corps. It will hinder or destroy our military's ability to respond to another crisis somewhere else in the world. It will affect recruiting efforts, already has. And it will further marginalize us in the international community.
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So today, the 'commanders on the ground' say they need more.
The commander of U.S. forces in northern Iraq said Friday that he did not have enough troops to deal with the escalating violence in Iraq's Diyala province, an unusually frank assertion for a top officer and a sign that American military officials might be starting to offer more candid and blunt assessments of the war.
Army Maj. Gen. Benjamin R. "Randy" Mixon also said that the Iraqi government had failed to help the situation in the restive province and that it has been a hindrance at times by failing to support local army and police forces. Diyala borders Baghdad on the east, and violence in the province has grown as U.S. troop levels have been bolstered in the capital.
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May I ask the good general, are ya gonna pull 'em out your ass? We certainly don't have the Guard troops to supplement, as we've seen in Kansas last week. Know what, General? There are no more. Yeah, you can con a few more into enlisting, somebody's always got it bad enough to think a tour or two in Iraq is a step up, or an escape from the law, but without a draft, we don't have the manpower anymore.
Iraq has become a meatgrinder, chopping up our kids' bodies and minds, and all they can do is ask for more young flesh to be shoveled into it. It's time to defund this war, even if our guys have to run for it like they did in Vietnam, they'd be better off than being sentenced to that war for an indeterminate amount of time, for an indeterminate number of deployments. No more 'wait and see'. No more Friedman Units. Send the C-5s and -141s and bring our kids home now, every last one of 'em.
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