Golden Slumber

Yesterday this story from the British paper The Guardian was getting a lot of play all over the internet, primarily because of its assertion that Bush is planning to put 20,000 more troops into Iraq in a "final push" to "win" the "war". This came, of course, on the same day that General Abizaid stood in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee and told them with a perfectly straight face that the number of troops is not too many, not too few -- juuuuust right.

Uh-huh. So let me get this straight. Bush says he listens to the generals on the ground. The top military commander in the region says he doesn't need any troops. He says this, almost certainly, because he's been told to say it, because he knows, as you and I know, that there aren't any more troops and no political or public will to move them if there were. But Bush is going to back-stab the generals, who've been loyally singing his tune, by demanding exactly what he said he'd support them in not needing. Does it seem like maybe these people need to get their stories straight?

The joke of it, of course, is the number 20,000. I've not been to Iraq recently. Or ever. But I've read a lot of people who have, and none of them thinks that 20,000 troops would make a lick of difference. I think we all know that 400,000 troops would have made a difference 3 years ago, and that's about the size of it. It's insulting to hold out the idea that we're 20,000 troops from turning this thing around. Bush may really think it, because this is his version of waking up to reality, and he is evidently a very, very heavy sleeper. But McCain is saying the same thing, with slightly different numbers, and in his case it's downright dishonest. He has every reason to know better. Need I point out that in 1965 we had 184,300 soldiers in Vietnam, and by 1968 had ramped that up to 536,100, and yet were never in much danger of winning the war? You could put 20,000 troops right in downtown Baghdad and it wouldn't stop the kidnappings -- which now, as you may have heard, take place in broad daylight at government ministries. So forget it.

I have more to say about Iraq and Vietnam, but I need to give it a little more thought first. I'm making that my task for next week. But for now, let's all spend the weekend contemplating the basic moral question that lurks at the center of both wars, and that, I think, is only recognized at all by the left: to allow any more Americans to die in Iraq in pursuit of an unattainable objective is akin to murder, or treason; to pull the troops abruptly out of Iraq is to shift that murder even more firmly onto the Iraqis and simultaneously to commit political suicide at home. So if you're a Dem, I think you're in the uncomfortable position of choosing between political survival and moral honesty. Appetizing, eh?

By the way, if you missed it, you really must read the Times piece on the Armed Services Committee hearing -- it reads like the minutes of a high school yearbook committee meeting, and is simultaneously hilarious and infuriating. McCain is acting like the captain of the football team, and Lieberman has cast himself as the nerd who thinks he's hot shit since he's in with a few of the popular kids because he does their homework for them. To all of which I say, in the eternal language of high school -- losers. But props to Hillary Clinton for using "hortatory" in context. Perhaps there's hope for her yet.