Published Jan 11, 2007
Thanks for introducing the plan that’ll allow us to win the war in Iraq. I really appreciate that you’ve gotten to the heart of it and discovered that an increase of 16% in our forces is what we need to win. This simple solution really gives us victory without having to change what it is we’re doing at all, and that’s an approach that every American can appreciate.
I do have to admit, though, I wonder why inreasing our troops by 16% wasn’t something we could have done all along. As you said “[t]his time, we will have the force levels we need to hold the areas that have been cleared.” I would have though that an inability to hold the places we just cleared woud’ve been noticeable much sooner after we invaded and put our soldiers in harm’s way every day. But I realize that force levels have gone up and down during the last three years, and there’s no way you could’ve been responsible for that fluctuation. I mean, that’s an Army thing, right?
Anyway that’s just splitting hairs, because it’s really exciting to have this fresh approach. Who other than you, our fearless leader, could’ve come up with the innovative idea of moving away from building the Iraqi army, which we’ve been wasting our time on for a couple of years now, and going back to doing it ourselves like we did in the beginning? That’s pretty out-of-the box right there, boy howdy! Good thing we’re getting away from strategies that didn’t work out for us and are returning to the strategies that didn’t work out for us before that other set of strategies didn’t work out for us. Ya know?
Overall, I’m just super-impressed with the quality of the decisionmaking that led you to this super new policy. I know I’m using the word super here a lot, but, really, it’s all just so… super. So that’s the right thing to call it. I really want to say that I know you could’ve gone with one of those super-complicated concepts, like what the Iraq Study Group put forth. But we all know that you have basically one thing you can fool with in this whole little conflict here, and that’s the number of troops we have over there, and boy are you fooling with that! You’re taking it as far as it can be taken, without having to reconsider our force structure or think about a draft or anything like that, of course. ‘Cause that would just be crazy talk. Seriously, it’s just super what you’re doing, it’s like Iraq is a video game and you have a controller with one big red button on the top that says “adjust force levels” on it and you’re just pushing the stuffing out of that button.1 Super. High score!
Let’s not forget that super thing that Condi said before Congress, that you all weren’t wedded to this strategy. That’s really the overlooked innovation here; you were so all into that last strategy that you had that you never would change it, but, revolutionarily, you’re actually prepared to move away from this new approach. Now that is a super new change! It’s like, you know, if you really believed in what you’re proposing, you’d be all into it again, but you’re breaking out of that box by not being “wedded to it.” Super! I bet we’ll see another approach just as revolutionary in a few months, like, maybe, cutting our troops by 20,000. That would be really mindblowing. I bet we’ll super-confuse those insurgent guys by having a bunch of approaches that we’re not wedded to, changing them any time things look a little down. That, boss, is a high score right there! Plus, you can totally stay ahead of that annoying legislative branch by being ready to change our approach before they even get a chance to hold hearings and ask what the heck is going on and if things are working. That is definitely a high score in the ol’ book of running the US Government!
Anyway, thanks, Mr. President. This is just a super new approach, and I expect super new results. Thanks for coming up with all this super stuff for us.
1 Because we had over 20,000 more troops in Iraq than we do now in 2003, and during two periods in 2005. You know, when you pushed that button to adjust it up and down before. It’s probably like Dance Dance Revolution, you gotta push that button frickin fast to win, so go for it.