Today Democrats rejoice at a 2nd indictment. This one delivered yesterday, by Rep. Murtha, on the President's handling of the war and a call for withdrawal. But don't just go out there saying "see a combat Vet says we should withdrawal, and he says it proudly." There's more to it than that. And you have to deliver the goods on this when people ask you why you support a withdrawal.
Luckily,
Larry Johnson wrote
a piece just on this point.
The situation in Iraq is clear. The United States does not have enough troops on the ground to contain and destroy the insurgency. The Iraqi insurgency consists of at least 26 different groups and draws upon as many as 250,000 supporters. These groups represent a spectrum of beliefs ranging from secular nationalists to hard core jihadists. The only thing they agree on is that they hate the invader; which is us.
In other words, there are a quarter million Iraqis ready to blow the region into a civil war, and instead of fighting each other, they've all decided to fight us. Got that? America is force uniting an otherwise fragmented enemy. Johnson continues:
To defeat the insurgency we will need at least 400,000 troops on the ground. At the present time, the United States does not have sufficient troop strength to ramp up to that level. Our choice is simple--either we come up with the additional forces and commit ourselves to an effort that will stretch on for at least five years with 400,000 plus soldiers and marines in theatre or we withdraw.
Or, in short, we need at least 400,000 troops on the ground in Iraq to effectuate the latest "oil-spot" strategy and defeat the insurgency. If we can't come up with that, we should get the hell out. No reason to send people to a meat grinder just to keep up appearences. Win or leave. And if we aren't going to give the Army the resources it needs to win, lets leave now.
Don't go off half-cocked on this. You'll just end up pissing off people you work with. Instead, hit them with those numbers. If they say, "why 400K troops?" Tell them: well, when we invaded, the Generals said they needed around half that, or 200K. Bush only gave them a little over half what they asked for and you saw what that led to. Now we're facing twice the number of enemy insurgents coming from all over the place. We need at least twice the troops."
And then refer them to LJ's blog No Quarter.