I kill children

I have been wanting to write about this so-called strategy that is now being espoused by the three great military minds of our time—I am of course referring to the Deliberator, the asshole, and the traitor—but I get so angry that I find it hard to be eloquent. So, instead, I just want to blurt out a few things:

It’s not a “surge.” I am so sick of hearing this word—or rather, I am so sick of reading this word, regurgitated as is by journalists who should know better. What Bush, McCain, and Lieberman are all pushing for is, plain and simple, escalation. Anyone old enough to remember or half smart enough to read a book about Vietnam knows what escalation looks like—more troops in theater—and what escalation results in—more dead soldiers.

And I’m not just thinking a few more dead soldiers—I’m sadly expecting a lot more. If we are to read between the mangled lines, the goal of the George-John-Joe escalation is to take on Muqtada al-Sadr and his Shi’a militia. Ignoring for just a moment the reaction of American troops when they discover that rather than using the additional forces to take on the Sunni insurgency (responsible for an estimated 80% of coalition casualties), they are instead to turn their guns on a well armed and rowdy bunch of Shi’a that until now has mostly been busy torturing and killing Sunnis, just imagine the reaction of the Shi’a. . . all of them.

Roiling the oil-rich south of the country and undermining our man in Baghdad (by Bush’s estimation, anyway), Nuri al-Maliki, will be just the beginning of what Vali Nasr calls potentially “the mother of all mistakes.”

Now, back to those soon to be so much worse off US soldiers: Newly minted Defense Secretary Bob Gates has been in Iraq this week listening to some carefully selected “advice” from the owners of some of those “boots on the ground”—and the press corps has been dutifully transcribing this prescreened pabulum. Apparently, the troops want help. Well, duh! If I were getting blown up for nothing and being fed into the meat grinder day after day and having my first, second, or third tour of duty extended without a whole lot of notice, I’d be hot for some reinforcements, too.

Of course, what the press and Bob Gates seem less eager to understand is that they would like better equipment, proper armor, and a real purpose. . . .

And when the escalation does nothing more than get more Iraqis shooting at more Americans, then what? More escalations? More time? One more last chance at victory? Or do we then “cut and run” and wash our hands of the whole unholy mess, blaming the Iraqis (without any understanding of which Iraqis) for not wanting democracy bad enough?

And when do the rest of the American people, the ones not losing limbs or lives in Iraq, rise up and yell, “Remember the election? We said, ‘No more!’” When, for that matter, will the establishment media point that out? Or all those newly empowered Democrats in the newly empowered majority?

A Republican Congress was willing to stop everything to impeach a president guilty of receiving fellatio—what is a Democratic Congress willing to do about a president who insists on giving escalatio?

What do we all do about a president hell bent on killing more children? We have passed the winter solstice; the days should not be getting darker.


Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, Good Kwanza, and Hooray for the Solstice.