Day 2202: The Urge to Surge

Thursday:


So, you’ve gone and kicked off a horrible terrible CIVIL WAR with both sides liking nothing better than to take pot shots at foreign soldiers just for getting in the way. Do you:

a) apologise to the United Nations and ask for help from the countries in the region and the rest of the world to try and ease tensions and help as many people as possible;

b) try to walk away and leave then to it, whistling innocently and hope that nobody notices;

or

c) stick your head further into the briar patch and shout loudly “Nyar nyar, can’t get MEEEEE!”

?

I may be fluffy, but I am not totally STUPID. I realise that things are going to be horribly terrible no matter what we do now. Just to abandon the people of Iraq to get on with their civil war would be cruel and heartless. Besides, we broke it; we bought it – as they say in Americaland.

Trying to force two warring armies apart – especially when they are warring in the crowded streets of a city – is either incredibly brave or incredibly stupid or, and this is what I think, BOTH!

Only one man could rally the nation behind such a bold plan.

Tragically, he was not available, so the Monkey-in-Chief addressed the nation instead.

Unusually for him, he actually tried to make a case for doing this damn silly thing in this damn silly way, setting out the reasons why failure in Iraq will be VERY BAD NEWS for America. Very bad news INDEED.

Of course, he overlooks that there was NO NEED to be there in the first place: when he set out on this course when many wise people warned him that if he invaded with no support from the UN and no plan for after the invasion then his hopes for a peaceful democratic pro-western state would be BOUND TO FAIL.

In spite of this, he told them he had lost patience and he invaded with no support from the UN and no plan for after the invasion. And his hopes for a peaceful democratic pro-western state HAVE FAILED.

Now says he has to keep going because it might be awful if he failed.

Still, this time he has taken the trouble to flag up a number of reasons to BLAME THE IRAQIS when it all goes belly-up again this time. He calls these “benchmarks” for the Iraqi government: share the oil revenues with the people, organise local elections, undo the de-Bath-ification (who needs BATHS! ugh wet!) that, er, the Americans insisted on in the first place, cure cancer, host the Winter Olympics and get a number one hit in the new downloadable top 40.

Yes, I know – how are they supposed to share the oil revenues when Halliburton have snaffled them all???


The BBC have provided a handy “at-a-glance” guide to the Monkey-in-Chief’s plans.

(Guess what: it is (c) above!)

He is going to rush a whole lot more targets troops into the capital, Baghdad. 80% of sectarian violence occurs in Baghdad, he says – possibly because that is where the sectarian sectors meet in the middle! And to really guarantee that a QUICK GETAWAY is out of the question for WHOEVER REPLACES HIM, he will be embedding more of the American troops into the Iraqi army.

This time it should work, he promises. Previously, they just never had enough troops in Iraq to control the country on the ground. According to the Brookings Institution, the previous high point, in November 2005, saw only 160,000 US troops and that number has fallen now to 140,000 in November 2006. So this new boost of 20,000 will take them to… hang on, maybe MATHEMATICS isn’t the Monkey-in-Chief’s strongest suit.

This strategy is built on the Baker-Hamilton IRAQ SURVEY GROUP findings. That’s “built on” in the sense of having them buried under the foundations of a freeway flyover, of course.

Where Baker-Hamilton recommend addressing Iran and Syria, they kind of meant addressing some NICE DIPLOMATIC LETTERS and not announcing “WE KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE!”

[“ABROAD!”]

The Monkey-in-Chief’s idea for winning the cooperation of the regional powers is to say he’s going to give them a good kicking, even though so far he’s been totally incapable of doing anything more that seriously p… BAD WORD them off.

Still, the Monkey-in-Chief is lucky enough to only have to face television cameras rather than anything really dangerous. Like the US Senate.

(This week Fried Rice was on the menu!)

Asked to explain how long a surge is, Ms Condescending said: “oh, we don’t expect it to last 18 months or two years”. She later clarified that she meant the surge and not the Monkey-in-Chief’s presidency.

The World response was, for once, pretty unified.

“It’s never going to work!” said the French, Germans, Russians, Chinese, Patagonians and the ambassador from the off-shore sea fort of Sealand.

“I for one welcome the new commands from our ant overlords,” said Mrs Bucket speaking for anyone British who still believes she’s important, adding “but even I don’t think it has a cat in hell’s chance!”

And the Iraqi Prime Minister commented: “I didn’t ask for this job, you know!”

With confident support like this, how can the Monkey-in-Chief fail?!