More Troops Now? Is it too little, too late?

Back prior to the launching of the Iraq war, I sent letters to my congressional representative and my two senators from California, registering my opposition to launching an unjustified war in Iraq. While Saddam Hussein was a despicable tyrant, he wasn't an immediate threat, wasn't involved in al-Queda, and we had not removed him in the first place in 1991 for the same reason things have been so bad there since. So, I begin by saying, that the war was unjustified and I from the beginning opposed it -- as did Barak Obama, I might add (though he wasn't in the Senate at the time).

That being said, will committing 21,000 plus troops into Iraq, as President Bush will announce this evening, make much of a difference now? Most experts say no. If we had wanted to achieve our expressed goals we should have been smart about it and gone in with the forces necessary to secure the country. We didn't and things have blown up. Gen. Shinseki spoke of hundreds of thousands of troops in the beginning, we're simply augmenting the troops with a relatively small number. So, is it too little, too late? Is President Bush's new way forward simply a reshuffling of the deck of the Titanic? I'm afraid this is so.

I hope for the best, for our sake, for the safety of our troops, and for the sake of the Iraqi people. Saddam was cruel, and yet for the most part people felt much safer then than now. And that stems from poor planning and poor execution on our part.

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