President Bush wants to boost permanent active-duty U.S. military troops by as many as 70,000 and promptly order a surge of added troops to Iraq to quell disorder and sectarian insurgency.

Hopefully, now that Democrats have taken over both houses of Congress, this will prompt our country's leaders to come together immediately for a badly-needed, fully civilized discussion and concrete decisions so we can win whatever gains have already been made in Iraq, and get out as soon as possible.

Stop the finger-pointing and get on with statecraft. Support the troops and what they have won so far. Do it in 100 hours, if House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid can organize and control their political troops. Or do it in 100 days.

But do it. And stop the finger-pointing, because we are in this together as a nation, and our people want a solution.

The president has bipartisan support from a pro-war coalition led by Sens. John McCain, Arizona Republican, and Joseph Lieberman, Connecticut Independent, who held a recent joint news conference on Capitol Hill to call for a surge of additional military troops to Iraq.

Senator Lieberman said: "Let there be no doubt: If Iraq descends into full-scale civil war, it will be a tremendous battlefield victory for al-Qaeda and Iran. Iraq is the central front in the global and regional war against Islamic extremism.

"To turn around the crisis, we need to send more American troops while we also train more Iraqi troops and strengthen the moderate political forces in the national government.

"After speaking with our military commanders and soldiers there, I strongly believe that additional U.S. troops must be deployed to Baghdad and Anbar province -- an increase that will at last allow us to establish security throughout the Iraqi capital, hold critical central neighborhoods in the city, clamp down on the insurgency, and defeat al-Qaeda in that province."

Senator Lieberman said it was American colonels in Baghdad and Ramadi, even more than the generals, who made the case for more U.S. troops. "In both places, these soldiers showed a strong commitment to the cause of stopping the extremists," the former Democratic vice-presidential candidate said.

"The most pressing problem we face in Iraq is not an absence of Iraqi political will or American diplomatic initiative, both of which are increasing and improving." Lieberman said. "It is a lack of basic security.

"As long as insurgents and death squads terrorize Baghdad, Iraq's nascent democratic institutions cannot be expected to function, much less win the trust of the people. The fear created by gang murders and mass abductions ensures that power will continue to flow to the very thugs and extremists who have the least interest in peace and reconciliation.

"This bloodshed, moreover, is not the inevitable product of ancient hatreds. It is the predictable consequence of a failure to ensure basic security and, equally important, of a conscious strategy by al-Qaeda and Iran, which have systematically aimed to undermine Iraq's fragile political center.

"By ruthlessly attacking the Shiites, in particular over the past three years, al-Qaeda has sought to provoke precisely the dynamic of reciprocal violence that threatens to consume the country."

According to the Pentagon, initial war plans for Iraq included an American invasion force of about 130,000 soldiers and Marines, which would drop quickly to as few as 30,000 to 50,000 by the end of 2003. Obviously, the intended force reduction did not happen.

Instead, as sectarian insurgents and death-squads terrorized Baghdad and other major population centers over the past almost four years, U.S. troop levels remained well above 130,000 to this day.

In December 2005, during Iraq's parliamentary elections, we had 160,000 troops on the ground. By March 2006, the number was 133,000 and the Pentagon cut Army combat brigades from 17 to 15. (A brigade is usually made up of 4,000 to 5,000 troops.)

Moreover, since October 2005, 80,000 of our country's National Guard and Reserve forces were deployed in 40 nations -- the largest number in Iraq where Guard units accounted for eight of 15 Army combat brigades.

The result: Our military is spread too thin around the world and our National Guard and Reserve forces are badly depleted for needs throughout our own country, shown after Katrina, and possible threats to our own homeland.

Whether we admit it or not -- and the political finger-pointing doesn't help: Despite the magnificent ability and commitment of our volunteer military forces and the support given to them by Congress and state legislatures, we are stretched too thin and in deep do-do.

Our country's enemies - notably, Iran, Syria, North Korea, and Russia - have exacerbated our strategic and tactical disadvantage with actions to bolster the terrorists with arms and financial support, while throwing down a continuing array of other threats of nuclear proliferation and other actions to destabilize us and our allies.

They know we have our hands too full and their destabilizing actions are sadly working.

Something has to break very soon in Iraq. The question is whether a big surge of troops is the right answer, and what would it gain with a minimum of further bloodshed and loss of American treasure?

We can be sure that Democratic anti-war leaders who now run Congress are going to push though a spate of resolutions against a military surge, and they will make a good case:

• Why should the United States and our young military men and women continue to be caught in the middle of a growing Iraqi civil war between Sunni insurgents and Shiites, with American troops losing their lives unnecessarily every day as the disorder spreads?

• Why has the administration not more solidly sided with the Shiites against Sunni insurgents and pushed the Sunni death-squads out of Baghdad?

• More especially, why have we not taken out the radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, a vehement opponent of the U.S. military presence and fomenter of so much of the hatred and violence responsible for American and Iraqi bloodshed?

So now is the time for honest reassessment of our direction in Iraq.

It is not a question of "moving forward." It is a question of winning.

We need some immediate hard decisions about our entire global diplomatic and military strategy to further liberty and economic productivity.

We must stop pouring American military lives, our national treasure, and billions of taxpayer dollars down the drain.

Retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Wesley Allen Riddle, an expert on military strategy, said it plainly in a recent piece written for Dallasblog.com:

"Ironically, when ground forces are engaged in large numbers, options are limited elsewhere, no matter how big your Navy and your Air Force are. These sister services are needed to support the land force; and further, boots on the ground are what matters at the end of the day. They determine who rules.

"If you embark to fundamentally remake another nation or society, you must rule and rule for a long time in order to accomplish your goals. You cannot, indeed must not cede sovereignty in short order after you've won it. If your goals are so all encompassing and comprehensive as to aim at erecting democratic institutions where there are none, to rebuild a military whom you have vanquished (twice), to make warring ethnic and sectarian factions live peaceably together, and to transform the Middle East by example -- you cannot hope to do so on the cheap, in terms of the numbers of troops or the extreme level of force those troops will have to exert.

"Of course, your objectives may well come into question, as indeed they should, if you are given to self-analysis or to constructive reassessment."

So let a hard reassessment begin, without all the political finger-pointing.

This is not only our own country's problem. It is a problem that affects the future of liberty and economic productivity of populations throughout the world.

So let us get behind pro-liberty leaders of good will everywhere, regardless of party, nationality, religion, or military rank, who want to get beyond mere rhetoric, so we can win this struggle certainly, with a minimum of further loss of national treasure.

We must get out of the mess we currently are in and organize ourselves better to win the battle against global criminals intent on taking away liberty and economic freedom for all. http://georgearchibald.typepad.com/george_archibald/

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