With Playstations, Wiis and whatnots out on the market, you'd think US President George W. Bush would have plenty of entertainment readily available (granted that he probably received mostly lumps of coal this past Christmas). Instead, he has decided to go for another round in the ultra-realistic video game known as the Iraq war. The video game is in fact so realistic that it does not end when you kill the maniacal tyrant of an end boss. Instead, the game goes into a very special "caught in civil war crossfire" mode that has the potential of lasting hundreds of times longer than the few weeks you spent on the first few levels. With 3300 coalition troops and countless Iraqi lives lost, how many extra lives does Bush think he has?
The answer to that question appears to be somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000, which is the increase in the number of troops Bush is expected to propose as part of a "surge" to, once and for all, secure Baghdad and end the Iraqi civil war. The problem is that those 30,000 troops won't magically appear out of thin air, and recruitment levels are, not suprisingly, rather low. Instead, the increase has to be accomplished primarily by extending the tours of some of the troops already in Iraq, and to start the tours earlier for others in America.
Quite understandably, most Americans and non-Americans alike are not happy with the Iraq war, and those of us who thought the war was a stupid idea to begin with are even less happy with the war than one imagined possible when it first began.
I think it's high time to recognise reality. This is not some computer game where you can type in a cheat code or just restart the level. This is war, and no matter how noble and necessary one may find it, it was always going to be an incredibly difficult, if not impossible, undertaking. Bush's handling of the war, which, if one was being unreasonably kind, could be summed up as being not particularly good, hasn't exactly made that undertaking any easier. This proposed surge isn't going to end the civil war, how could it? Almost four years have gone by with little progress made since the fall of Baghdad, and the US military is becoming more and more strained every day. How is a surge going to counter that? There are only two options: standing in the middle of a civil war, or getting the hell out. It's a horrible, horrible conclusion to have to reach, but it is reality. A liberal democratic Iraq, free of tyranny and opression, a shining beacon of liberty in the Middle East, would certainly have been a sight to see. But it's not going to happen, at least not by military means and not for a very long while.
The recently installed 110th Congress, which seem to be at least slightly saner than the 109th, had better rein in the President and unplug the console.
Game over.
