Surge!

Okay, now he's gone and done it. Georgie's going to speechify i the next half hour about how he's going to expand the size of the military. See, he wants a surge! of troops in Iraq, but there ain't any to surge with. So we have to get more.

It's an admission that he's broken the military, and they need more guys to fix it. It's an admission of final, fatal stupidity.

Somehow, America has gone from post-Cold War peace dividend-smaller military-budget surplus-unquestioned world leadership, to broke, humbled, and broken. That's your Republican leadership!

And he's put Democrats in an awkward position (yet again). How can you oppose expanding the military when all the top soldiers are saying it's a 'broken force?' It doesn't matter how or who broke it - the American military needs to be fixed and to operate as it should.

So Democrats should support a build-up. But that should be done on their terms. That means no permanent increases, and no stupid increases. No throwing more money at millile defense or Rummy's 'weapons of the future.'

Iraq is a massive failure. Even Georgie's starting to see that: "we're not winning and we're not losing". In American Georgie, if you're not winning you are losing.

I lament, for the billionth time, the loss of "smart America." Smart America used to be the country that did things with an intelligence and thoroughness and can-do attitude that was the envy of the world.

The Smart American military could plan a war, execute, win, clean up, and get out. Oh, we stumbled in Vietnam, but even then Smart American leaned the Lessons of Vietnam. That was: plan, execute, clean up, exit. Don't try to execute, exit. It doesn't work.

But the far rightists never learned that simple lesson. For them, if we just tried more execute and less exit, we would have won Vietnam. It's pure lunacy.

And it's that lunacy, spiced with grotesque stupidity, that's put us in Vietnam II, and that keeps us making the worst possible decisions.

In his (most welcome) exit speech, Rummy talked about the need for America to be strong. But what is strong? Is strong the bully who beats on the weak, steals, disregards the opinions of absolutely everyone else, and then gets stuck in a fight he can't win and calls for help? How intimidating is that guy?

What happened to the karate expert with a sniper rifle who 'walked softly and carried a big stick?' What happened to the guy who talked to everybody - friend and foe - until he formed a censuses by strength of will - and by the example of his demonstrated ethics and morality?

That guy's gone. I hope to see him back around some day. Until then, we're giving the big dumb guy a bigger stick to replace the one he broke.

I hope he doesn't start using it.