More troops? Unfortunately, yes.

In general, in recent years, I've found myself agreeing more than disagreeing with Democrats when it comes to policy matters. I tend toward being fiscally conservative, but socially liberal, so right now no party encapsulates my total belief package. My view on government could be summed up as "don't spend more than we give you and leave us the **** alone."
However, I did find myself, to my own surprise, siding with George W. Bush of all people regarding what needs to be done in Iraq.
Trust me, I was as floored as you are.
Last night he put forward a new plan for dealing with Iraq. I doubt it will work, but the principle behind it is sound. There needs to be a surge of troop presence in Baghdad (and the Al- Anbar province) to smother violence there so that the Iraqi government can get on its feet.
Personally, I do not support the war. Oh, I bought into it at first, when I believed that Iraq was working on nukes and all types of other nasty stuff, but like many Americans, when that turned out to be a farce, my support went up in smoke. I feel like we were hoodwinked and bamboozled and the real culprit and danger, Osama bin Laden, has been allowed to skate free while we got mired down in a place we should not have been.
However, we broke it. We have to fix it. And it will hurt us for years to come. It will hurt us economically, politically, socially and knocked us off the moral high horse the U.S. claimed to hold for so many decades. However, we can't run from it. We have to stick things out.
Why? Because it is our responsibility. And, I personally think it will serve as a moral lesson for generations to come that war is serious business and not something you go into lightly, or at all if possible. This administration seemed to have forgotten that at some point. Oh, they gave lip service to the gravity of going to war, but now that we know what they knew and what our intelligence agencies told them, it's clear they did not have a solid footing to commit us to this war.
War is painful, war is destructive, war is death. Those things do not end on the battlefield. Consider Iraq our millstone. We have to bear it to the end not only for the sake of honor and responsibility, but for the simple reason that we've got it coming for sticking our nose in it in the first place. Not to mention the fact that, yes, if Iraq completely collapses we'll have problems there for years to come and eventually would likely have to go back anyway. Might as well do things right now while we're there. Bush will get his due in history for this farce. Of that I'm sure. Let's not make 25 million people pay the price along with him.

Many Democrats and some Republicans have suggested that we need to pull back to show the Iraqi's we're serious about them taking responsibility for their nation. Good policy in general, but it doesn't work in this instance specifically. Why? Because I don't think we can trust al Maliki and the current Iraqi administration as far as we can throw them.
There are shiite and sunni death squads roaming the streets in packs, killing virtually indiscriminately. Too often the shiite death squads are reported to be wearing military and police uniforms when doing their dirt. Also, the cleric Muqtada al Sadr and his Mahdi Army are an open, unabashed shiite militia, tied to numerous deaths and the kidnapping of at least one U.S. soldier. When it came time for us to go into Sadr City (Muqtada's Baghdad stronghold) to find our man, al Maliki turned on us in support of the illegal Mahdi Army.
Here's what I think the reality is in Baghdad and other portions of Iraq:
We've successfully trained and armed a shiite genocide faction in the Middle East.
I think once we withdraw from Iraq there will be a human crisis on the scale of Darfour, Sudan as shiites trained by the U.S. and armed with U.S. weaponry, will massacre the Sunnis. Now, we know there are Sunni factions just as murderous. But you and I know the world will forget all about that when they have a shiite armed with an M-16 on Time Magazine.
And, the shiites are in power. That gives them an advantage, which, when unchecked, could lead to horrific slaughter.
For all our claims to to understand the Shiite/Sunni conflict it still boils down to age-old clan-based animosity. We've seen this fight before.
Montagues v. Capulets.
Hatfields v. McCoys
Earps v. Clantons
Crips v. Bloods.
Ninjas v. Pirates.
When one side gets a distinct advantage over the other, there's a bloodbath.
That's why we have to stay for the time being and calm things down. We need to bring the level of violence there down. That means making some people we call friends mad. It means going into Sadr City, shutting down the Mahdi Army as well as Al Queda in Iraq. It means asking al Maliki's forgiveness instead of begging his permission when we go after shiite deathsquads with political ties. Enough uniforms on the street WILL make a difference, if we are allowed to take the gloves off and not view conflicting certain people as pariah.
Once the situation has calmed down and there are new elections, perhaps a calm, secure Iraqi people will be more inclined to vote in someone who has the whole nation's interests at heart.
The only real difficulty I see will be making sure our people have the latitude they need. The only question is whether 20,000 troops are enough.
I know people want the Iraqis to step up, I do too. But, really, if that were a driving force in the minds of the Iraqis Saddam wouldn't have been in power in the first place.