Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Bush Administration Fiasco Continues

Remember Afghanistan? The place where Osama bin Laden and al Qaida were located? Because of the fiasco in Iraq, Bush never got around to finishing the job in Afghanistan, a war clearly related to the 9/11 terrorists. Steve Clemons notes where some of the troops for the Bush 'surge' are coming from:
Bush Makes Same Mistake Twice: Pulling Troops from Afghanistan to Deploy to Iraq

President Bush is planning to pull troops out of Afghanistan to deploy to Iraq.

From the Baltimore Sun:
As a last-ditch effort, President Bush is expected to announce this week the dispatch of thousands of additional troops to Iraq as a stopgap measure, an order that Pentagon officials say would strain the Army and Marine Corps as they struggle to man both wars.

Already, a U.S. Army infantry battalion fighting in a critical area of eastern Afghanistan is due to be withdrawn within weeks in order to deploy to Iraq.

Read the Baltimore Sun article and ask yourself if the president really knows what he's doing.

My grandfather said once that if you're going to do a job, do it right. One time, he amplified on the theme and said you don't do a job halfway and then rush off to do a job somewhere else; you finish the job you started and then you move on. My grandfather was a Republican and he had far more sense than the current Republican in the White House.

We don't need more troops in Iraq at this point, we need a political settlement, a drawdown and a redeployment. The 'troop surge' ignores the need for a more sensible direction in Iraq. There are no good solutions in Iraq but it is becoming increasingly important to repair our foreign policy.

The president has two wars going and neither are going all that well. The problem in Afghanistan is more a matter of neglect. Iraq, however, is a strategic blunder. And Wednesday night, Bush hinted at possible war with Syria and Iran. The president isn't merely incompetent, he is out of control. I don't know what's going to happen but there are growing signs that a number of Republicans in Congress are finally realizing that the guys in the White House need to be reined in.

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