Ten weeks ago, millions of My Fellow Americans cast their ballots to vote incumbent Republican after incumbent Republican out of office, moving that party out of power and installing Democratic majorities in the House and Senate. In many races, it didn’t matter that the Democratic candidate didn’t look or sound much different than the Republican candidate. What mattered was that the incumbent Republican was, tacitly or overtly, supportive of the President’s Iraq policy and a clear message had to be sent to the President: You broke Iraq, now you fix it.

Six weeks ago, the country was waiting for the report from the bi-partisan Iraq Study Group. The Administration disagreed with quite a few of their recommendations. So the President announced his long — awaited speech on Iraq strategy would have to wait a bit longer. Then January comes and, faced with a choice between the status quo, withdrawal or escalation, the President and Commander-in-Chief of the United States armed forces decides to escalate the conflict by sending additional troops to Iraq — with about 17,000 to be sent to Baghdad.

As plans go, it’s aggressively optimistic — and the President thinks you’re stupid enough to believe it will work. Why would you have to be stupid to believe it? Because you would have to believe that the President has faith in the Iraqi Prime Minister and his government to deliver on their promises.

This is the same government the President said would “collapse” without American support. The same government that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld described as needing us to take “our hands off the bicycle seat” and the same prime minister that the President’s own national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, said may or may not be willing and/or able to do the job politically or militarily just two months ago. So to get you to believe that he is going to place his presidential legacy in this man’s hands, George W. Bush would have to think you’re stupid.

The U.S. Army counter-insurgency manual says upwards of 200,000 troops are needed to provide real security for a city the size of Baghdad, so an increase of 17,000 troops isn’t nearly enough to accomplish the mission. To get you to believe he doesn’t realize he’s not sending enough troops to accomplish the “new” mission (when the new American commander in Iraq, General David Patraeus, actually wrote the new Army counter-insurgency manual), the President would have to think you’re stupid.

Prime Minister al-Maliki promised additional troops for Baghdad last summer in Operation Together Forward, but didn’t send them. The Prime Minister also promised Iraq’s Sunni parties back in 2005 that he would reform the process of amending Iraq’s Constitution to include them, but never got around to it. In the next 10 months, Mr. al-Maliki is supposed to not only fix that document, but also reform de-Baathification laws, take over reconstruction and infrastructure projects, and draft legislation to govern the sharing of oil revenues — while literally beholden to Moqtada al-Sadr, the Shiite cleric who controls his political future. So to get you to believe that a government which has basically refused to govern will get its act together and unify a country in which hundreds of people are tortured and executed every day, the President would have to think you’re stupid.

Or maybe I’m wrong. There is an alternative: It’s possible that the President has truly lost his mind.

None of the generals who served in Iraq think additional troops are a good idea since it provides less incentive for Iraqis to take over security. In his “60 Minutes” interview on Sunday night, the President still links Iraq and al-Qaeda (though he has admitted that Iraq had “nothing” to do with the terrorist hijackings of Sept. 11, 2001) and, in his speech last week, connected Iraq with his fictional “war on terror” in the first sentence. That’s not only crazy, it’s immoral. He’s also said he would stay in Iraq even if “Laura and Barney are the only ones who support (him).”

The sacrifice being made in the “decisive ideological struggle of our time” is not shared. American troops (many who signed up to actually fight al-Qaeda after 9/11) are about to be sent to Iraq for their second or third, even fourth, tour in four years. Whether their Commander-in-Chief is certifiable or just condescending, it’s now up to the Democrats in Congress to protect these troops from him. The voters are behind the Democrats and there are any number of retired generals and up to a dozen or so Republicans in the Senate who are in play. So it’s time to put together a bi-partisan, Pentagon-friendly coalition and craft the alternative that the President is challenging them to come up with. Our brave fighting men and women need it — and they deserve it.

Kenny Mack can be reached at kennymack@gmail.com.