System Failure

Most of the time our Democracy works. Unpopular, successful ideas are enacted as policy and unpopular ideas and their advocates are sent packing. So the War in Iraq is very unpopular. There has just been a massive rebuke delivered to the responsible party in a recent election. Despite this, the administration is not only continuing it commitment to this war, but is now contemplating escalating the conflict.

Now sending more troops to Iraq is hideously unpopular. It receives somewhere like 8% to 16% support, depending on the polls. Greenwald asks:

Even the craziest, most despicable ideas can attract more than 8%-16% in polls. More and more Republicans realize the grave political danger posed to them by this war. Are they going to just sit by and let the President sink their party for a generation by "doubling down" and continuing to worship at the altar of its most extremist warmonger elements?

Lowry notes that the "only" group opposed to more troops is the military, specifically Generals Abazaid and Pace, which leads to a glaring question that never seems to be answered by the increase-troop proponents: namely, what are these additional 20,000 troops supposed to accomplish exactly? If Generals Abazid and Pace have no answer to that question, isn't it a pretty good bet that there is no good answer?

There are time when you want the system to fail, There are things that "the people" want that can't and shouldn't be delivered by Government. The classic example is that people would love lots of government spending and pay zero taxes. That would just be dumb. But here we have a case where the American people want the right thing. More troops to Iraq will Break the Army. It won't lead to "victory" Its a bad and unpopular policy. How does it get enacted?