For those who hoped the 2006 mid-term elections would mean a substantive and rapid change in Iraq policy, you might have to think again.
For those who thought the media narrative of the bipartisan wise men offering a “way out” for the Bush administration’s fizzled Iraq policy meant a flicker of light at the end of the tunnel, you might have to think again.
And for those who thought Bush 43 would be relieved to be “rescued” by a key member of Bush 41’s cabinet who many felt is the political alter ego (and perhaps even the public voice) of Bush 43, you might have to think again.
In short: it looks as if the United States may be heading into two years of big trouble — and not just on the military and diplomacy fronts.
In one corner (for now at least) you have the Jim Baker-led Iraq Study Group (which sounds like some people sitting in their dorms at 2 a.m. guzzling Red Bull to prepare for tomorrow’s exam). In that corner, too, are Democrats and some Republicans who are “realists” linked closer to Bush 41.
In the other, steadfast Bush loyalists, neocons and a political heavyweight who has quickly morphed from unpredictable maverick to a GOP establishment figure, Senator John McCain.
Add it all together and you get big trouble. UNLESS a new cabinet member named Robert Gates plays a role in shaping policy — and also if, once again, Bush’s hard-line pronouncements eventually give way to greater flexibility than seemed likely at first blush.
But the picture that emerged yesterday wasn’t pretty, as the New York Times notes:
President Bush moved quickly on Thursday to distance himself from the central recommendations of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group: pulling back all combat brigades over the next 15 months and direct talks with Iran and Syria.
One day after the independent panel rocked Washington with its bleak assessment of conditions in Iraq, Mr. Bush met at the White House with his closest ally in the war, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain. The president said afterward that the United States needs “a new approach� in Iraq and that he would ‘’seriously consider� the report, but was unlikely to accept all of its recommendations.
But members of the ISG are too polite and diplomatic to call Bush seemingly deciding to pick and choose which policy shifts he wants — which allow him appear to accept the report, while actually ignoring key parts of it. Right? WRONG:
At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, the co-chairmen of the panel, James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton, called on Congress to exert pressure on Mr. Bush to accept the report in its entirety. Mr. Baker told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the White House should not treat the report “like a fruit salad,� while Mr. Hamilton complained that Congress had been ‘’extremely timid� in overseeing the war.
Subtext: if Bush doesn’t act on key parts of it, even if he points to an internal evaluation that suggests he follow the course he prefers, he may be faced with public criticism from some highly respected members of the Democratic and Republican establishments. These are figures who’ve largely transcended the kind of harsh rhetoric employed on left and right talk radio and who enjoy a special status as (to use the cliche) political and policy Grown Ups.
But Bush also showed that he will not alter his policies wholesale just because some prominent people from both parties study the situation in Iraq:
But Mr. Bush, in his first extended comments on the study, pushed back. With Mr. Blair by his side, the president said he needed to be “flexible and realistic� in considering troop movements, and made clear he would impose preconditions for talking to Iran and Syria that neither side is willing to accept. He was especially animated in describing what he said would be the consequences of a failure to stabilize Iraq, saying that future generations of Americans would be put at risk.
On the other hand, the group has come under fire for another reason by experts on the right and left: for really not coming up with anything all that new.
“Underwhelming,” said Stratfor, a private intelligence consultancy.
Anthony Cordesman, senior analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, called the group “the elephant (that) gives birth to a mouse.”
Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute — a consultant to the Iraq Study Group who quit after concluding he was a token neoconservative — said the report reads “like the Cliff’s notes to a high school term paper.”
Phyllis Bennis and Erik Leaver, analysts for the progressive Institute for Policy Studies, concluded in an essay that “Despite the breathless hype, the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group report did not include any dramatic new ideas for ending the war in Iraq.”
That kind of skepticism is a dramatic departure from the expectations that preceded the report and the interest that continued to surround it Thursday, when the group’s co-chairmen, Republican former Secretary of State James Baker and Democratic former Rep. Lee Hamilton seemed ubiquitous in Washington and the book version of the report soared to the No. 2 spot on both the Amazon and Barnes and Noble Web sites.
To some analysts, the divide between expectations and reality said more about the unreasonableness of the former than the cold truth of the latter.
Senators also have their doubts, according to the Washington Post:
But Republicans and Democrats alike on the Senate Armed Services panel quizzed former secretary of state James A. Baker III and former congressman Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.) about specifics. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) was the most dubious, singling out the group’s decision not to call for sending more troops to Iraq. “I believe that this is a recipe that will lead to, sooner or later, our defeat in Iraq,” he said.
Another leading presidential aspirant, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), was more receptive but expressed doubt that President Bush would act on the report. “We’ve now heard from the Iraq Study Group, but we need the White House to become the Iraq Results Group,” she said. “That is very frustrating for some of us. We don’t understand the misjudgments and missteps that have been taken in the last years.”
Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), along with several colleagues, took aim at one of the bipartisan commission’s most controversial proposals: that the United States use diplomacy to find ways to get Syria and Iran to help stabilize Iraq. “I’m skeptical that it’s realistic to think that Iran wants to help the United States succeed in Iraq,” he said.
So who “won” and who “lost” in this? Times Online:
The biggest loser from the Iraq Study Group report is President Bush; it has given him a much sharper rebuke than the White House was expecting.
It has also damaged Senator John McCain, the loudest advocate of putting many more troops into Iraq, now the single most unpopular political position in the US. The report’s conclusions make McCain look like the nation’s maverick, not the next president.
There aren’t many winners, but they may include senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, the leading contenders for the Democratic nomination, who may draw support for their different but more nuanced positions. And Gordon Brown: should the Chancellor become prime minister, and want to lead British troops quickly out of Iraq, then the report will have given him full written authorisation.
The White House wanted one thing from the bipartisan panel chaired by James Baker and Lee Hamilton: not to be told to pull troops out. In return, it was prepared to be told off for past mistakes. Few among White House officials or on Capitol Hill thought that Baker, an adviser to Bush’s father, would embarrass the President by overstepping that “red line�. That reckoning was wrong. The report sets out to box Bush in and strip away options, putting the choice of “stay the course� with 140,000 troops out of reach.
It recommends the withdrawal of all combat troops within 15 months, but insists that this is not the same as an immediate withdrawal. That is disingenuous. Withdrawal is not a trivial exercise and in any form would take months — not least to protect the troops themselves.
Indeed, the generals may prove to be Bush’s best weapon if he chooses to reject the call for a withdrawal. Senior military officers yesterday sharply criticized the recommendation that the panel seems to regard as uncontentious: a fivefold increase, to 20,000, of the number of US troops embedded with Iraqi forces to train and guide them. To leave small numbers of troops in Iraq, in tiny, dispersed units, without the protection of a large force, is a recipe for their kidnap or killing, they have argued.
So there’s lots of uncertainty, but one certainty:
The controversy, debate — and perhaps the growing number of political casualties, along with the military ones — will continue for a while.
Perhaps all through 2008.
UPDATE:
—Ed Morrissey sees it is another way, in another MUST READ. A small excerpt (but read it all): “It’s hard to fight a war against radical Islamist terrorists when one is trying their best to kiss up to their biggest sponsors. That’s something that James Baker, Lee Hamilton, and the rest of the ISG seem to have forgotten. Fortunately, Bush has not.”
—Gun Toting Liberal, in a post titled, “OK, Everyone Back On The Titanic” has another MUST READ post from a different perspective, looking at the anti-ISG reaction of McCain and the Bush administration. Read it all but here’s a quote:
There is a difference between a defeat and a no-win situation. Avoiding a no-win situation requires a minimum amount of realism. This has not existed in Washington for some years. Along comes the Iraq Study Group and the intake of realistic, mature advice is causing tempers to rise and testosterone to flow.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.