Right after President Bush made his speech tonight explaining how an extra 20,000 troops will somehow be an effective referee in the long standing conflict between Sunnis and Shiites, former N.C. Senator and Presidential Candidate John Edwards said something to the effect of that we need to redeploy troops out of Iraq in order for the Iraqis to be forced to stand up on their own two feet. In addition, he mentioned how people usually respond positively when they don’t have a crutch to fall back on. Edwards’s argument regarding troops in Iraq, was the exact same argument that many Republicans use to justify lowering welfare benefits to people; remove the crutch of welfare and people will be forced to stand on their on two feet. Bush however who campaigned back in 2000 saying he did not believe in nation building and wanted to control spending in the government, is currently advocating for increased spending in order to nation build. Up is down and down is up. 
    Regarding Bush’s actual plan, it won’t surprise any frequent reader of this blog to know that I don’t agree with it. I feel the best course of action right now would be to help to Iraq into 3 nearly autonomous regions. There would be an extremely loose central government whose main responsibility would be to distribute oil revenues equally to the 3 regions based on population. The United States should redeploy troops to Afghanistan and Somalia to track Al Qaeda members; in addition troops should be put along the borders of Syria and Iran in order to minimize influence from these countries in any of the 3 Iraqi regions. However, United States forces should not be involved in referring any the low grade civil war between the Sunnis, Shiites, and to a lesser extent the Kurds.