The trouble is that the Iraq Study Group is ultimately providing false hope for an extended war. Its assessment is appropriately bleak. For example, “Key Shia and Kurdish leaders,” the commission finds, “have little commitment to national reconciliation.” Now, given that these leaders comprise the Iraqi government, one might think that would lead to the conclusion that Iraq is doomed to an intensifying sectarian conflict, and unless one believes it is in the United States’ interest to pick a side in someone else’s civil war, that means it’s time to go home. Instead, the commission, despite its own better judgment in its report, is gearing up for what Hamilton called “one last chance at making Iraq work.” It’s hard to see what’s responsible about this.
Yes. Sure. But…there is one problem. America’s wise-men (plus Near Eastern expert Sandra Day O’Connor) are scared to death. Our Muslim allies are scared to death. The Israelis are scared to death. And things are bad now, but they seem manageable. That is, things seem manageable until you start looking at things like troop rotations, equipment maintenence, projected costs for the Veteran’s Administration, and public opinion. In the end, the Iraq Study Group got it right before they got it wrong.
Current U.S. policy is not working, as the level of violence in Iraq is rising and the government is not advancing national reconciliation. Making no changes in policy would simply delay the day of reckoning at a high cost.
The Iraq Study Group offers a false hope by providing changes that purport to do more than ‘delay the day of reckoning’. Yet, it reality, they do not offer anything more than delay.
More Ackerman:
The commission quotes a senior U.S. general as saying that the Iraqis “still do not know what kind of country they want to have.” The bottom line, the commission says rather aptly, is “there are many armed groups within Iraq, and very little will to lay down arms.” Put differently, each side believes it has more to gain through war than through negotiation.
The commission is right about this. Where it goes wrong is in its recommendation that we should be actively supporting an Iraqi political process that is hostage to such dysfunction and sectarian chaos. After all, if none of the relevant actors within the Iraqi government or in the political structure at large is interested in peace, pressuring them to just make nice with one another isn’t going to work.
Correctumundo.
I don’t want be a downer, but someone needs to talk sense to (waning) power, here. Individual Iraqis may want peace but, collectively, they do not want peace. And if our aim is peace, then it makes little sense for us to be training and arming the Shi’a in a country devolved into all out sectarian conflict. It might seem all abstract and antiseptic when you look at it from afar, but Baghdad is a city that suffers mortar attacks at night only to wake up to eighty to a hundred headless, tortured corpses each morning. This is not something we want to arbitrate. And our leadership lacks all the requisite good will and curiosity to have any chance as peacemakers.
We really need to get a grip. I know that the Establishment is terrified. They should be terrified. I’m terrified. But I know a losing strategy when I see one. I don’t want any more soldiers to die just to put off the day of reckoning. Let that day come soon. And we can finally take a reckoning of our leadership and our Establishment…and what they have wrought, and begin to fashion a better day.
need to be learned but that will be unpalateable to the elite in our country.
The ISG report is a bi-partisan report that hits Bush hard. This will go down well with the people, and expect some kind of media meme that it is the holy grail and bi-partisan and part of a process of healing America so that we can all get behind one strategy……… etc
The problem is, we have lost and anything we now do will still result in us losing. As you point out Iraq is a total mess and we are facing in the medium termm future seeing our not so democratic allies in the middle east either fall or become forced by their people into ceasing to be our allies. As we lose in Iraq we shouldnt forget Israel just lost in Lebanon. No doubt they will want a nother go to restiore pride some time soon and as their government swings to the right it becomes also possible again. Talking of Lebanon, we see the March 14 movement government facing a people power uprising similiar to the one that brought them to power. It is widely known that if elections were held now the opposition would easily win even under the current sectarian based electoral system that insures the Christians are massively overrepresented and the Shia even more massively underrepresented. Then there is Iran. The danger here is that any attack on Iran by either Israel or us will inevitably lead to massive support for the Iranians on the Arab Street even though they are not Arabs again leading to the wrecking of any alliances we have left in the region. That sanctions will be so weak or non-existant will not mollify a belligerent Israel and could even lead to the more insane members of our own administration deciding on a bombing mission or two.
All round the middle east looks a mess, and our foreign policy here , which has never been good has now become disastrous. How we managed to get into this situation in the worlds largets oil producing region when we are more reliant on oil than any other country is beyond comprehension, but it ceratinly shows that the real interests of the average American and America iteself have certainly not been behind our foreign policy in this region.
We saw it happen in Vietnam – we spent four years or more thinking if we had just spent more lives, more money, taken a different strategy, etc. Since we have that knowledge spending more lives, more money, etc. will probably lead to the same results – getting the hell out of there with our tail between our legs and having a pretty negative reception with the world community for the immediate future. Those additional lost lives and lost limbs shouldn’t be the risk we take for this terrible war. Get out now and put this administration on trial. Show the world that we will face up to our wrongs by making corrections. That would be showing some strength in a time when all that we have illustrated is fool headed snobbery with a disregard for human life, liberty, and property. Then, maybe we’ll have some resources for stopping the spread of terrorism.
I don’t think this is entirely true. The problem is that you can no longer think of Iraqis in terms of that: Iraqis. The past three years of sectarian violence and chaos have eliminated whatever shreds of national identity remained.
Collectively (which is to say the vast majority of), Sunnis want peace, Shias want peace, and Kurds want peace. But they want it negotiated on their own terms, and the less likely that becomes, the more likely they are to resort to violence.
All but a few want the security that comes with peace. But a Sunni peace is not a Shia peace. The biggest obstacle to peace in Iraq is that there are no more Iraqis.
Headliners tell it all.
Apocalypse now: 79 recommendations and a President forced into a corner.
A bombshell that intensifies the pressure on Bush.
“The report calls into question the administration’s entire Middle East policy: not just its failure in Iraq, but its attitude to the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, its approach to the Lebanon/Syria crisis, and its relations with Iran.[.]
“instead the ISG suggests the nuclear confrontation with Iran should be dealt with at the United Nations,[.]
that last sentence brings this headline from Israel:-Debkafile
Olmert refuses to recognize Washington’s policy reversal on a nuclear Iran.”
Robert Gates’ reference to an Israeli nuclear weapon was synchronized with Baker’s exclusion of Israel from a Mid East conference[.]
Well, as I see it the 9 months it has taken for this group to investigate this and then the time it took for them to compromise on the he wording and things then the time it took to edit the passage and then get it to the printer; things have changed dramatically since all of this has happened. This study is way out of date. Things are much much worse than when they started or even ended their study.
I suggest this is just a slap in the face of jr and then get back to the normal ways of this government to deceive us all. This is their nomenclature. I call their cards on this and call it a dog and pony show. Or, as one would say, a wag the dog show.
I think they are all playing us for fools..and we will be fools if we take any of this as gospel.
Now mind you, this is just my honest opinion on things but I do not intend on getting burned again from any government. I listened to Russ Feingold last night and it dawned to me that he knows what he is speaking about. It would behoove us to listen to him.