Me and Squinty McGee

Deciding whether or not to watch the President's speech tonight about the increase of troops in Iraq by 20,000 is hard for me. I want to be informed, but I enjoy owning a television and if I watch Squinty McGee stammer about how we'll really fix Iraq now for reals I may throw my beer through the set.

President Bush will tell the nation Wednesday night he will send more than 20,000 additional American forces to Iraq, acknowledging that it was a mistake earlier not to have more American and Iraqi troops fighting the war.

No, the mistake was GOING THERE IN THE FIRST DAMN PLACE. It was a stupid, short-sighted, ill-planned maneuver and I still don't exactly know how it happened. I don't have a security clearance, but I knew that Iraq was the least of our problems after 9/11. Instead of spending money to bolster our emergency preparedness or to completely deal with Afghanistan, we had a nice fireworks show in Iraq at the expense of over 3,000 Americans who died and the Iraqis who died as well. Bush made this mess and he should fix it. In a purely America-centric sense, I don't think sending more troops over is going to help us end this. I think it will lead to many more American deaths and only a marginal improvement in the situation in Iraq. My own theory is that we should get the Iraqis prepared to fight the insurgents themselves and start getting the hell out of there.

In any case, this declaration of troop escalation will be the first test for the new Democratic majority. Nancy Pelosi is making noise about blocking the funding for any additional troops, so we'll see how much the Democrats can shift the direction of the war. As Ms. Pelosi said, voters were pretty clear about not wanting to stay in Iraq any longer than necessary. Let's hope they can get the troops home soon and override Bush's misguided fix for a misguided war.