Bush's big speech today pretty much said what everyone was expecting: there have been no changes in our current battle plans or exit strategies for Iraq. My sense is that people across the party lines, especially the now unified democratic force, are getting tired of all these hazy strategies which seem to be putting our troops at risk for almost no justifiable reason. So, what could Bush and his peeps do to make things better?

Terrorism cannot be fought with legions of troops, but rather with carefully analyzed intelligence and well thought out strategies to thwart the enemies' plans. Iraq, though, has never been about fighting terrorism. At best it was about taking down a regime which was abusing its power, at worst... well, now is not the time to go into motives. Iraq did not support Al Qaeda, in fact the two are bitter enemies. Bush has better relations with the Bin Laden family than Saddam does. Everything Iraq did fell much more easily into the "extreme government corruption" category than terrorism, so calling the War in Iraq the War on Terror is a misnomer in my opinion. In any case, the current purpose for Coalition troops to be in Iraq is to keep another dictator from coming to power, and to act as a police force while Iraq goes through its unstable transitional period. I can respect that, but our people, our economy, and our world relations depend on our ability to get out of the country as quickly and as smoothly as possible.

There should be no reason that we cannot come up with some sort of strategy for withdrawal that we can work on together with Iraqi people looking to restore order and human rights to their nation. The country is not currently a foreseeable threat to Americans outside its borders, the people within all facets of the Iraqi nation want our troops to leave, and, frankly, the only thing I see keeping the American military force in Iraq in such great numbers is our own oil interests. This is unacceptable. Let's start drawing up some time tables, create a plan to quickly and safely remove our troops, and try and pull this country together by fixing our domestic policies rather than flexing our muscles overseas. But that's just what I think.

Your thoughts?