i feel bad about other people's necks

victory, noun: achievement of mastery or success in a struggle or endeavor against odds or difficulties

here is the monologue that i imagine took place in bush's head after the nineteen trillionth person asked him what he actually meant when he said "victory in iraq is still a possibility" and, when bush appeared confused by the question, one of his aides showed him how to look words up in the dictionary, yielding the above definition:

"so, 'victory in iraq' would be . . . well, let's see. since the difficulty we are struggling to master is primarily that the united states has never put enough troops on the ground in iraq to quell an insurgence which has spread its little wings and taken flight as a fledgling civil war and which at this point requires far more political restructuring than policing while simultaneously training what, from all reports, is an almost entirely green iraqi military, 'victory in iraq' must mean more troops. right?

"right! round up the men and load the humvees, boys! victory is ours!"

oh, um, that middle part? out of character for the president, right? that's the monologue that took place when i temporarily inhabited bush's body and grabbed his brain up in my hands and shook it like a tambourine, which, of course, jogged all the bats and goop loose and totally freaked me out, forcing me to flee and return control of his mental processes to him just in time for him to come to that dastardly, simple-as-a-two-piece-jigsaw conclusion.

the problem, i think, is that "more troops" is as far as the president--and possibly a vast number of other officials--cares to quantify matters, and he doesn't seem to grasp that there are different levels of "more," each with its own degree of effectiveness. our version of "more," to date, has had a degree of effectiveness of somewhere between 0 and -174.

between february and april of 2004, the coalition presence in iraq increased by close to 23,000 troops. it held about steady until november of that year, and between november 2004 and february 2005 it increased by about 18,000 troops, to 180,000. but in march it was down to 172,000, by april it was down to 164,000, and it dropped and dropped by dribs and drabs . . . so between september and november of 2005, we sent another 23,000, bringing the total up to 183,000. by january of 2006, that number was down to about 157,000. by the end of 2006, the troop strength was around 160,000, give or take.

at no point since the invasion have coalition ("coalition"? it sounds goofy now, doesn't it? my coach told me there was no "i" in "team," and even in "coalition" there are two of them) forces totaled more than 185,000 troops--and at no point since the invasion have the coalition forces been on the receiving end of anything that might be even loosely referred to as "victory." so one could conclude that the "more"s we've been contributing--20,000 here, 20,000 there, but all bringing us back to about where we started--are the wrong sort of "more."

and, of course, many people have come to that conclusion. "bad president!" they cry. "you can bang our heads into this wall until the end of time, but i swear to you, they will never break open and shower you with candy!"

"unpatriotic naysayers!" the president shouts back, swinging his stick in aimless arcs and reaffixing the elastic of his party hat over the sides of his blindfold. "staying the course always leads to candy! it's candy land! iraq is just a comma-shaped molasses swamp! now shut up and give me my Now and Laters!"

bush's Now and Laters are extra sticky and taste like ass, and the wrappers read a little like this:

Defying public opinion polls and the newly empowered Democratic leadership, Bush on Wednesday moved to send 21,500 more U.S. troops to Iraq while saying it was a mistake not to have had more forces there previously.

"The question is whether our new strategy will bring us closer to success. I believe that it will," Bush said in excerpts released by the White House before the speech. Stepping back now "would force a collapse of the Iraqi government" and could mean U.S. troops staying even longer, he said.

bleccchhhhhh.

yes, it was a mistake to not have had more forces there previously. here's the thing: YOU ARE NOT GOING TO HAVE MORE FORCES THERE NOW. YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE EXACTLY AS MANY FORCES AS YOU HAVE HAD THE ENTIRE TIME. I AM TALKING VERY LOUDLY, MR. BUSH, JUST IN CASE THE PROBLEM FOR THE PAST FOUR YEARS HAS BEEN THAT A BIT OF FLUFF HAS BLOWN INTO YOUR LEFT EAR AND GOTTEN STUCK.

this "surge" isn't a solution--or a surge; it's maintenance, and that maintenance is of a failing status quo. 21,500 more troops means leaving our military and the citizens of iraq where they've been, and that means thousands more dead. it isn't enough to effect the change that needs to take place. it isn't enough to fill the positions our soldiers have been scrabbling to fill. it isn't enough to do anything but make bush look worse in the eyes of americans and the world and deepen the pool of blood that's accumulated in the middle eastern desert. it's more of the same, and in my opinion a lot of the people who are up in arms about that have little or no right to be: more of the same is exactly what they demanded when they put bush back in office in 2004. i, on the other hand, ought to have the right to secede by now, i've been so staunchly against him since day 1. i want to hope that there's still a chance that a more convincing show of humility and regret on bush's part could win over a few global allies and earn a troop commitment from other countries that could put us, finally, on solid footing. i want to hope that--but i don't. the pompous stubbornness of a few old men has likely doomed us and our soldiers to a sacrifice most people never cared or intended to make.

i don't want one more death, and i don't want this war to go on for one more day. i never wanted it. but we destroyed a country, we did, and i am equally disinclined to watch us stick our hands in our pockets, shrug, and back away from the ruins like a clumsy kid in a mikasa outlet. bush wants to devote another billion dollars to reconstruction efforts, but the buildings are not all that got broken, and even if you pay for the vase, when you get home and open its box it will still be shattered. when you close the box back up, put it in the back of the hall closet, and walk away from it, it will still be shattered. to make it a vase again, you have to fix it. you can't reassemble it, glue up a third of the fractures, and say, "well, it isn't my fault if it doesn't want to try" when the water you pour into it blows out the sides and soaks the carpet. you have to fix it.

21,500 new troops is not how. it hasn't been how for the past four years, and yet we have done it again and again. not that i know how; i'm starting to wonder if, at this point in the debacle, there is a how. but to do nothing, to cut our losses (but they wouldn't really all be our losses, would they? or even mostly ours) and withdraw, as some people are suggesting? to holler "suck it up and you'll be fine!" over our shoulders as we flee the scene? i don't want to try to live with that.

was there a solution, for a while? and we ignored it? and now we have all this blood on our hands, and because we can't bear to look at them we squeeze our eyes shut and sit on them.

stop it. hold them up and own them, and apologize. and beg--beg--the rest of the world to help you put this thing you've broken into some kind of order. forget about victory, forget it; just do what's right.