Uh oh

Bush Plan for Iraq Requests More Troops and More Jobs!!! (Boldface and exclamation marks mine)

The news is in, the papers are running headlines--boldfaced and with exclamation marks hitting home with the newest Iraq war revelation!!! Well, not really, sort of, but the NY Times reported less than 10 minutes before this will be published that Bush is in fact going with the "surge" plan; he's deciding (or decided already?) to put 20,000 American troops into Iraq, an amount to be matched by Iraq's army. Jobs will be created for Iraq's civilians, at a cost of approximately 1 million dollars!!! Oh, umm, what? Right. That's 1 billion dollars! (Evil pinky placed on corner of mouth)

Too bad that new Congress we recently elected, consisting of a Democratic majority, is a moot point. Apparently. Nuts to Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-VT) and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who

"said in a letter to the president on Friday that the United States should move
instead toward a phased withdrawal of American troops, to begin in the next four
months."

Uh oh. More on this soon. Friends home from a trip to Arkansas are here and I must visit with them and see if the country appears the same when viewed from the Southern angle.

I'm back. And this report--same link as above--says Bush's plan would put troops on the ground in Iraq for possibly less than a year. That's positive. Some presence, authority, stability, whatever, is needed. That's truth. It's up to Congress to decide whether or not they want to curb spending in Iraq: doing so puts them at risk of bringing up the "your on our side or you're with the terrorists" argument that is sounding less eloquent these days (see Approval Ratings or the sweeping changes in political affiliation of newly elected Congress members).

Couldn't America use some sort of small-scale Works Progress/Projects Administration (WPA)? I mean, we're not in Reconstruction or a Depression or anything, but are there not homeless and poverty-strucken here? If you say no, I'll disagree vehemently. The lid of my plastic trash barrel sounds a loud thud when people look inside it for cans or bottles or any piece of junk that shows promise, as I sit and eat Frosted Flakes and drink organic, shade-grown cofee most mornings. Well, if Iraq gets a work program, I sincerely hope it works. I like to think about social justice globally as well as locally.

20,000 troops? Maybe we should have a discussion about this. It sounds grave, but if Congress agrees to continuing fund the effort, I can't complain. It's up to them now to make a name for themselves; whether they make a deep, gashed mark or a clean, successful one is yet to be seen, and I am really not one to say which is better, to send more troops (of course I support the troops, I know a few) or to just be finished with it and admit defeat--although that might lead to more conflict (if a worse mess than so many debris and body-strewn Baghdad streets over the past 5 years can, in fact, be made).

Let's hope some kind of diplomacy takes place between the executive and legislative branches.