A call for more war.

The big news tonight is the call for more troops in Iraq by President Bush, which goes directly against the majority vote of bringing the troops home.

Obviously more debate has been stirred, with, once again, "republicans" and "democrats" on each side of the pot.

• Here's one way to look at it:
  

Time to put down the meaningless labels and step back for a second and examine this truth:

We are talking about war. We are talking about human deaths.

We are talking about people that have families, that breath the same air.

No one, and I repeat (this can't be contested in any way) no one, has the authority to call the lives of others in such a fashion. I don't care who you are, or what person A did, you have no authority over them, especially if you have a spiritual belief of some sort.

• Here's another way to look at it:

Our safety and security as a nation and the well-being of others are at risk. We have to take care of that. Jessica McBride's blog Shares a viewpoint generally the same as this. To me, it starts to get boring to read.

• My viewpoint:

I'm definitely not the meddling kind, and based on the following reported from JS Online:

"Those officials said the new plan rests on a new set of assumptions about Iraq. The old assumption, they said, was that political progress in holding elections and forming a government would defuse violence and unrest and increase stability in the country.

'But in 2006, the opposite happened,' said Bush on Wednesday, referring to the civil warring between Shiites and Sunnis.

The new strategic assumption is that the U.S. and Iraqi forces must suppress violence and protect the populace before true political stability is possible, officials said."

So what I gather is that we're just going to guess-and-check until we get it right? Along the lines of the former point of view I outlined, are human lives this expendable, to enforce a way of life that even some Americans (actually many, from what I gather,) don't even agree with?

There are many problems in both the U.S. and in Iraq (and now Iran, and Syria, and everywhere,) to try to solve. What gets me is, "why are 'we' even there?"

So from the googling I've done, here's what I understand:

1. Bush failed at finding Weapons of Mass Destruction.
2. There was still reason to believe that there were direct threats in Iraq. So we stayed.
3. We admittedly screwed up. So we stayed and vowed to fix everything.
4. Now we're still there fighting, and not fixing, still hanging on the claim that we're threatened.

So if there are Sunnis and Shiites that are fighting each other, and fighting us, then why are we still there? At this point, then, wouldn't the best bet be to pull out? Or are we sticking to the whole "threat" deal?

My big idea is to not lose sight of our true goals. There's no use in trying to be a hero to people that either don't need or don't want saving. A local police officer who is spending time in Iraq to train and teach the people there reports (almost word for word): "They are unappreciative, and don't care or want help. This is a joke."

Is it? Or is it our duty to keep trying, whether it's guess-and-check or not?