A Liberal Argument for "The Surge"

President Bush wants to send thousands more troops into Iraq. It's a strategy he and his advisers are calling "the surge." The premise is simple enough: American troops put down resistance in area X but they can't stay there because there's something bad going down in area Y. So the troops move to area Y to deal with that problem and, in the mean time, the insurgency flares back up again in area X.

It's rather a lot like a game of wack-a-mole, but with IEDs and tanks.

President Bush thinks that if he could just get enough troops on the ground so that they could deal with areas X and Y at the same time then the insurgency would stay quelled and he could get on with his victory party. Of course, he's wrong, and there are about a dozen reasons why he's wrong, but none of those matter at this point.

At the end of the day Leftists like myself need to recognize one inescapable fact. Until January of 2008, President Bush is, for better or worse, the Commander in Chief of all United States Armed Forces. If he says "jump" they ask when they can come down and if he says "go to Iraq" they go. Neither Nancy Pelosi, Barbra Boxer, nor John Kerry have the legal and constitutional authority to keep Bush from sending American troops to die in Iraq. The best the Congress can do is refuse to pay the bill, but that will just mean our men and women go to war without the weapons and equipment they need to survive.

"The Surge" is going to happen - like it or not.