The Occasional Observer

So it seems to be a lock that Bush will propose sending another ~20,000 troops to Iraq. I have a very difficult time understanding the use of this; it seems to be wrong on so many levels. First, when making a move such as this I think it is essential to heavily weigh opinion of senior military officials. However, as best I can tell, there is no clear call from the military for 20,000 more troops. This number is useless - it is not a large enough increase to effect the kind of change they need (e.g,. secure the borders, lock down Baghdad, protect oil pipeline and field infrastructure, etc.) You'd probably need 200,000 more troops to do that, which we don't have.

Second, there does not seem to be any clear mission for these increased troops. This is what really bothers me. If the policy were to increase troop levels by 'x' amount to specifically accomplish task 'y', and the level of strength seemed appropriately matched for the goal, then I'm all for it. But with no clear objective, and with what seems to be a less-than-sufficient increase if stability is your goal, I am hard pressed to see why this additional strain on military is the best possible use of troops to protect U.S. I just don't think the reason that we're not having as much success as we'd like in rebuilding is because we're 20,000 troops short (which represents a small increase of just ~14%). Not to mention the rules of engagement make it nearly impossible for our military to do its job properly, and nation-building is not what they were trained to do as we've discussed on this blog before, so without any change in policy it doesn't seem that more troops (at this small level) will help.