The Pentagon had previously stated that commanders wanted as many as 10,000 additional troops in Afghanistan but with both the Army and Marines being stretched thin between the two countries, officials have struggled to produce the extra forces. Currently, there are around 32,000 U.S. troops deployed in Afghanistan.

The reasons behind fighting the war with Iraq were already cloudy to begin with. First it was to find weapons of mass destruction and then to bring democracy to Iraq. The talk about sending more troops to Afghanistan only makes people question what we were doing in Iraq to begin with if Afghanistan was more of a threat.

Iraq has begun to improve since last year. Its government and military has gained a considerable amount of confidence, and violence and attacks on U.S.-led troops have dropped to the lowest levels since 2004.

Since that’s the case, maybe it’s time the Bush administration turn their attention to Afghanistan.

Focusing so much on Iraq might have helped the country to improve, but it also caused us to neglect the threat that the Taliban pose in Afghanistan, which only allowed the group to grow stronger. Instead of deploying more troops to both Iraq and Afghanistan, diverting the troops might help deal with the shortage.

If we are short on troops because they’re tied up in the Middle East, we won’t have enough resources if another crisis came about.

The Bush administration’s plan to deploy more troops to Afghanistan might make people question the information the public has been given. Has Afghanistan always been a threat or has conflict suddenly gotten worse?

If the Bush administration has known that Afghanistan was the ultimate threat but was too proud to admit that entering Iraq was a mistake, then shame on them. We may now face the possibility of prolonging the fighting on two fronts.

What the Bush administration needs to do is to come up with a more solid plan to end this war, and find a more productive way to speed up the process of pulling out.