Iraq Study Group report: further proof that Iraq breeds more American assholes than all our Evangelical crazies put together

It seems to me the Iraq Study Group report falls down on one main thing, which is that it is still behind Bush's idea that "when the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down" -- i.e. that success in Iraq depends on us training the Iraqi Army. A few questions:

1. What for? So the Shiites are better trained to kill Sunnis? That's the only use Iraqis have for our training, and they don't need any training from us for that. They can drill holes in Sunni skulls, apply electricity to their privates, and shoot them in the back of the head without any training from us.

2. To put down the insurgency? That's not what they're fighting about in Iraq anymore -- it's militias against militias, warlords vs. warlords. There is no so-called central government in Iraq anymore, that controls a so-called Iraqi Army, to bring order to a so-called country. Iraq is ruled by militias, and they're fighting it out among themselves for control of different neighborhoods, areas and regions. There's sweet fuck-all a soldier in the Iraqi Army can do about that, except to join the militia of his choice.

3. What makes us think we're the ones to train them? To be as useless as we are in Iraq? If our Army can't bring order to Iraq, how come they'll be able to, especially if they're trained by our useless bunch?

4. Why do we Americans have an elite of such dumb fucks -- Bush, Cheney, Baker, etc.? The dumbfuckery of the best and the brighest in Vietnam is repeating itself in Iraq. The real reason Bush/Cheney started the Iraq War -- to get the oil exploration contracts in Iraq for their Texas oil buddies that Saddam was giving to the Russians and the Chinese -- has become unattainable. So why don't they get out?

5. Why don't they try the following? Simply leave enough troops in our four biggest Iraq bases, holed up inside them, withdrawn from all fighting, to discourage Syria, Saudi-Arabia, Turkey and Iran from invading Iraq and creating a bigger conflict. That's the only real contribution we can make at this point, to contain the fighting to Iraq by our mere presence in our bases, sitting there doing nothing, and letting the Iraqis fight it out among themselves. Keeping the mess we've made confined to Iraq is a pretty noble thing to do, more noble than anything else we've done. Plus, by doing nothing, we won't be sacrificing a single US soldier anymore to a fight that isn't ours.

6. That's the only sensible Plan B for Iraq. So how come I, Adam Ash, a little blogger who's never been to Iraq, can come up with a common-sense plan when an entire Administration and all our politicians remain clueless? Don't they have any brains in their heads? Do only our stupidest assholes go into politics? Or are we Americans all just a bunch of stupid imperialist overreaching assholes anyway?

Enough of my ranting: here are some pieces that tear the Study Group to pieces:


1. Baker Cooks Up Another Foul Dish -- by David Michael Green

So. The James (Baker) Gang have finally come down from the mountain to deliver to us their long-awaited recipe for salvation from the Mess in Mesopotamia.

Can you say "bold"?

No, actually, you can’t. And neither can Baker. Unless, of course, he’s making sure that George W. Bush becomes president of the United States after losing an election. Or maybe when he’s defending the House of Saud against lawsuits filed by American victims of 9/11.

That was as bold as it gets. Not to mention contemptuous.

Unfortunately, the Baker report on Iraq is only one of those two things, and if you need to guess which, here’s a hint – it doesn’t start with a ‘b’.

True, it is a measure of the extent of Bush’s wreckage how little Baker and his people could have done, even had boldness been a part of their vocabulary. There are simply no good answers to the question, "What the hell should we do now?" In fact, there probably haven’t been any for about two years now, but the situation goes on deteriorating considerably with every passing month, such that maintaining the present disastrous course surely cannot be the best choice.

Remember how cute it once was to have a tough guy in the White House, governing by his gut, rather than by the concerns of pesky State Department bureaucrats who’ve spent a lifetime learning about the Middle East? Not any more. This is what happens when the greatest military and economic power ever to exist on the planet is put in the hands of an emotional cripple, whose agenda is driven by a palpable need to show the world that he’s not a screw-up (despite a lifetime of evidence to the contrary), and that he can outdo his daddy, after all. This is why we don’t let thirteen year-olds drive cars, folks, and why we cringe when we do hand over the keys at sixteen. Imagine an immature ten year-old piloting a fleet of oil tankers, and thinking, "I wonder what would happen if I rammed them all together". If, like that kid, you’re also wondering what the result might look like, take a glance at the Mid-East.

Now, almost four years later, there will be no democracy in Iraq. There will be no American victory in Iraq. There will be no great blow struck against evildoers in Iraq. And – very likely – there will ultimately be no Iraq in Iraq either. The very best the country and the region and the world can hope for at this point would be precisely the status quo ante. That is, a pacified Iraq, united under the autocratic and repressive leadership of some brutal dictator. Nearly 3,000 American deaths later, with perhaps two-thirds of a million Iraqis similarly dispatched, and wide-scale destruction of the country’s physical and social infrastructure – all that, and the best we can hope for is Saddam, Version 2.0.

And that’s the best-case scenario. Let’s not kid ourselves about how bad this can get. The chances of Humpty-Dumpty ever going back together are minimal at this point. While the embarrassingly ever-obsequious American media debates whether or not to call this a civil war, precisely that rages across Baghdad with white-hot intensity. Or perhaps even worse. What was once a civil war is now increasingly looking like pure, unorganized, chaotic human violence, the stuff of post-apocalyptic science fiction. Now, the factions have factions, the reprisals have reprisals, the second cousins avenge the grand-nephews, the violence is increasingly random, and the flavor is of a national-scale Clockwork Orange, turned up to eleven.

Iraq was always an improbable state, just as was Yugoslavia. Both survived for the same reason – an iron-fisted strongman who wielded unvarnished brutality to impose the will of the state – and both predictably fell to pieces when that top-down unifying force was removed. If only George Bush had thought a bit about that before committing other people’s sons and daughters to his great folly. But that would have meant actually doing the "hard work" he repeatedly referenced in his 2004 debates with John Kerry, as he was all the while apparently avoiding exactly the same with equal intensity, whenever out of the public eye. No wonder Jim Webb admitted to wanting to detach this guy’s head from his body at their White House meeting last week. Could you imagine having your son in harm’s way in Iraq, sent there by a guy who only found out that the Muslim community is divided into Shia and Sunnis two months before the invasion began, and months after he had in fact already ordered it to go forward? In my book, the mystery isn’t why Webb nearly exploded, but rather why that hasn’t been happening every day of the week for three years now.

In any case, what’s much more probable than Iraq’s best-case scenario of unbelievable tragedy and waste, only to end up about where we started (minus one or two shattered lives), is something far more grievous than even that. Iraq is already in deep into civil war, and even if the violence could be stopped today, the damage to social capital is immense, and very likely far too widespread to ever again contemplate even some sort of federalist power-sharing arrangement within a unitary polity. That’s a fancy way of saying that too many people hate too many other people to imagine them ever trusting each other enough to cooperatively govern a single country. In a region where political affinities and identities are tribal and familial, and where even the perception of insult according to often-Byzantine honor codes must be avenged with death in order for a man to be a man, it borders on the inconceivable that there could ever be an Iraq again, except by means of terrible repression in the hands of some Saddam-like Shiite junta, and perhaps not even then.

More likely is that the civil war rages on, gets a lot worse, then gets a lot worse again by dragging in surrounding states like Iran, Syria, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Israel, and then perhaps gets even worse yet by inflaming the region sufficiently to diminish the flow of oil to, and therefore also the economies of, those parts of the world which depend on the black heroin, which nowadays means just about everybody outside of Myanmar and Bhutan. About the only thing ‘good’ you can say concerning this crisis is that, in our (rapidly-fading) unipolar moment, it is unlikely to suck in a gaggle of adversarial big dogs into a great power war, a la Sarajevo in 1914, but even that can’t be guaranteed. Everybody’s got interests at play in those latitudes.

I’m not predicting the dire outcome of a regionalized civil war at this point, but I would say it is a more likely bet than the best-case scenario described above, which is of course itself hardly any picnic. Let’s not forget just how not-good that best-case scenario is, and how incredibly costly it would be as well – politically, morally, fiscally and strategically. The Chinese must be laughing their heads off, standing by and waiting their turn while today’s hegemon is kind enough to do the work of imploding for them, rolling out the red carpet for China’s ascendance as the next Masters of the Universe. Lord knows the Iranians and al Qaeda are partying down. Any doubts about whether Allah is the one and true god have surely now been resolved. How else to explain a ridiculously improbable victory of rag-tag militants over an infinitely more powerful enemy who decided to play every possible wrong card and thus self-destruct? If this had happened two thousand years ago, it would be a chapter in somebody’s bible today, and we’d all be celebrating it as some religious holiday. So-and-so slew so-and-so, and these ones marched upon those ones, but then the hand of the Almighty reached down and caused parting waters / burning bushes / storms of locusts / whatever whatever, causing the very bad people to do really stupid things and miraculously hand over victory to the nice god-fearing folks.

Meanwhile, there are to this day some hard-core kooks still running around saying that this thing can yet be won. Notice, however, that they are not on the Baker Commission, which has clearly given up on the war, even if it can’t say so. And notice, as ever, it is always with somebody else’s blood, not theirs or their children’s. But just about anybody with any sense (that is, pretty much everybody outside of the White House) now realizes that that idea is sheer fantasy (and may have been even back in March 2003), and is busy at the ugly task of trying to choose the least-worst alternative (for themselves, if not also for America and Iraq). In any case, any slightest prayer of America salvaging this war would require a massive deployment of forces for an extremely long time, which of course means a draft.

If the Republican Party seems like it is in free-fall now, imagine how it would look after the advent of compulsory military service (and attendant riots) in order to support the escalation of W’s personal grudge match against Saddam. Which is precisely why the GOP, ironically but nevertheless especially, would never let such a bill get through Congress. ‘Dead-ender’ neoconservatives can rant all they want about how impatient and misguided Americans are, and how they are unwilling to sacrifice in GWOT, their silly global war on terror (next stop, Belfast!), but Americans are no fools (at least not in the longer term). Neither is the White House for that matter. There’s a reason why the war had to be sold on the basis of fear. Nobody from Kansas or South Carolina wants to send their kid off to die for democracy in the Mid-East, and far less so now than three-and-a-half years ago. Since that’s the most that war can now be claimed to be about (the WMD and al Qaeda links somehow mysteriously disappearing), the war is rightly seen by many as a foolish waste of American blood and treasure, and – most ironic of all – even American security, since our forces are now pinned down in this endless war of choice and are thus unavailable for any real emergency elsewhere. All of which means that a draft would represent the greatest case of American partycide since the Whigs imploded over the question of slavery, half-again a century ago.

Meanwhile the regressives who rejoiced at this war and worshiped the plastic turkey tough-guy who ordered it up are furiously scrambling to affix blame anywhere else they can. A couple of them have had the good sense and intellectual honesty to be properly mortified at the monster they’ve created, if not the moral courage to try to rectify it, compensate those harmed for it, and – at the very least – mercifully spare us their policy and opinion making insights from this point forward. If I were Francis Fukuyama or Thomas Friedman, for example, I would be sorely tempted to engage in the professional equivalent of what the English used to delicately refer to as ‘doing the right thing’, and pen a final column declaring something along the lines of "Nobody as painfully lacking in wisdom as me ought to have the public’s ear anymore, and I will therefore cease and desist from pontificating about international politics, a subject about which I am obviously and dangerously ill-informed". Perhaps these idiot-savants-turned-just-plain-idiots could become color commentators for college football broadcasts, instead. Can’t you just see it?: "Well, Francis, contrary to your emphatically expressed assurances, State did get that first-down after all. Fortunately, even though you were egregiously and embarrassingly in error, I’m happy to report that tens of thousands of people nevertheless still remain alive. And now back to the field."

But even those guys are the more honorable (which is not to say honorable, however) of the lot. The rest are replaying the Vietnam end-game once more, looking for any possible explanation upon which to affix this tragedy other than their own sheer stupidity. Some are now already blaming the press for reporting the demoralizing truth, as if that is what the media has done anyhow. After blindly cheerleading for the war from before it began until long after, the press still hasn’t begun to touch the actual horrors of this disaster, in part because of their corporate interests, in part because of their sense of ‘good taste’ (as in, "please crawl off into a corner and do your brutally horrific dying off camera, if you don’t mind – our viewers don’t wish to see that during dinner"), and in part because Iraq is so incredibly, chaotically bloody that it cannot be realistically covered now, anyhow, anymore than you could dig a really deep well and expect a satellite cam to send you a live feed from Hell.

Many neocons (as if the old con wasn’t bad enough) have now formed a circular firing squad and are turning their wrath upon the likes of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld for a war that could hardly have been more ineptly executed if Michael Brown himself had been presiding over it. And they’re right about that much. Forget for a minute whether invading Iraq was a good idea or awful. For a guy whose whole presidency rides on this single initiative, it is breathtaking to contemplate how many ways in which George Bush has been his own worse enemy by making astonishingly foolish decisions about the war. But, of course, it was an awful idea, which is where the neocons are yet again being deceitful in their scramble for cover. It is doubtful this war could have been won even if all the right cards had been played. Moreover, why weren’t they telling us back then that Bush was becoming his own train-wreck, so we could have said no thanks?

And so here, finally, comes James Baker, tattered broom in hand, sent by Poppy to clean up yet another (sigh) of Sonny’s screw-ups. But the absurd set of possibilities (not even recommendations) his group has produced is even worse than the classic case of bureaucratic death by committee. It is as if they did an average of everybody’s position, from Hugo Chávez to General Jack D. Ripper, hoping to please everyone just a little bit. This useless piece of anodyne garbage timidly nudged into daylight by Washington’s über-Establishment is just one notch slightly less deluded than is the Resident, himself. Even if there were real options for Iraq, this look-like-you’re-doing-something-while-actually-not-doing-anything choice of deck-chair rearrangement – possibly moving some small number of battalions, to some place out of harm’s way, on some unspecified timetable, all depending on the Iraqi ‘government’ doing what the infinitely more powerful American military cannot – would surely be the worst of them. Its only purpose can be to extend the day of reckoning another few months, and another few thousand deaths, down the line.

Oh, and let’s not forget the happy talk with Syria and Iran! More bold solutions! (Actually, for George W. Bush, yeah.) Fat lot of good that’s going to do in 2007. Nobody controls the streets of Iraq today, especially, anybody from outside. And why would Iran or Syria want to do the US any favors, anyhow, after the way Bush has trashed them both for six years? They wouldn’t. Unless, of course, he cut a deal with them that had something for everybody. And so that’s what it’s come to then, huh? Enhancing the power of a member of the Axis of Evil along with its Mini-Me junior partner, in order to extricate ourselves from the mess we’ve made invading another in that same club? And this is the ‘moderate’ position in Washington? What’s next, trading ICBMs for help from North Korea?

As for the mighty James Baker, himself – who, we are told, apparently fancies himself something of a great statesman out of the nineteenth century European great power mold rather than the oily (pun fully intended) political hack that he really is (not for nothing is he often referred to as the Bush family consigliere) – the man ought to be on his knees begging our forgiveness for the unmitigated disaster of a presidency he foisted upon us in 2000, even if he hadn’t also trashed the Constitution and democracy itself in the process of bequeathing to us the fine gift of eight years under the Boy King.

Remarkably, though, even Baker’s dinner of cold and lumpy Malto-Meal is too bold for the Caligula Kid in the White House, who is already indicating that he won’t be following the Commission’s ridiculously watered-down recommendations. For all the wrong reasons, Bush won’t be listening to even his daddy’s surrogates’ (especially not to his daddy’s surrogates) pretty-please suggestions that he end this war in bloody shame now, rather than ending it in bloodier shame tomorrow.

Maybe if his daughters were pinned down right this moment in some Baghdad rathole of a shooting gallery, their filthy fatigues stuck to their skin and reeking of grime, sweat and terror – rather than off partying, as they are, their sorority girl selves through Argentina – maybe (and I mean maybe, because who knows just how deep the selfishness and cowardice runs in this frightened boy masquerading as a man) their dad would not be blowing off even the hapless Baker to remain still longer in Iraq, hoping for a miracle to save his own skin (as if that could possibly happen now, anyhow).

Maybe Barbara and Jenna’s dad would be thinking more like another James – the one who wanted to deck him last week for asking "How’s your boy?" regarding Webb’s son trapped in Bush’s Iraqi inferno.

Maybe, like the senator-elect, he would also want nothing more than just to bring those kids home.

(David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York. He is delighted to receive readers' reactions to his articles ( dmg@regressiveantidote.net ), but regrets that time constraints do not always allow him to respond. More of his work can be found at his website, www.regressiveantidote.net)


2. Baker's Iraq Plan Not So Grand
U.S troops just don't have the means to stop Iraq's death squads. Why the Baker proposals could turn into a nightmare.
By Christopher Dickey/Newsweek

On this the day of the Grand Plan, such as it is, let’s dream that a year from now there are a new set of givens in the Middle East growing out of the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group: the United States, working with the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, has trained up an efficient military and police force. Baghdad is secure. Tens of thousands of American ground combat forces are on their way home. (Many tens of thousands more remain for air-to-ground combat, intelligence, logistics, training, advising, embedding and such.)

Meanwhile, the Palestinians and Israelis, prodded by Washington, are moving ahead toward a resolution of the issue that has bled the region like an ulcer for more than 50 years. Damascus is tilting away from Tehran and democracy is allowed to flourish once more in Lebanon. We’re still spending more than $2 billion a week on the Iraq adventure, but there seems to be an end in sight.

Another possible improvement that Study Group co-chairman James Baker probably has in the back of his mind, if not in his report: a year from now Saudi Arabia will have ramped up its oil production considerably. Once again, as in the 1990s, it may have the spare capacity to turn on the pumps at will, driving global prices down in coordination with U.S. policy. If it does, it could starve Iran of the money the mullahs need to fuel their plans for regional dominance and nuclear development.

All that might happen … But, no, I don’t think it will. Much more likely is that our dreams in the Middle East a year from now, like this year, last year and the year before, will be nightmares. And that’s true even if by then we’re “winning.”

Every day we move closer to the edge of a humanitarian abyss. Think the Balkans, Rwanda or Darfur, but with this grim difference: the United States won’t be able to stand back from the slaughter and wring its hands in Iraq. It is implicated up to its elbows already, and there’s more to come. Attempts to hold Iraq together by political compromise have failed. If the Americans stay there in any way, shape or form, they’re going to have to choose sides, backing Iraqi “friends” who will do whatever they think is necessary to impose order.

That was the not-so-coded message from the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim , shortly after he met with President Bush in the White House on Monday. (Yes, you read the name of his organization right. Hakim’s goal is quite explicitly “the Islamic Revolution in Iraq,” but, hey, America finds its friends where it can in Baghdad these days.)

Addressing the United States Institute of Peace during his Washington visit, Hakim said the United States was soft on the armed opposition he wants to exterminate. “This fight they are getting from the multinational forces [is] not hard enough to put an end to their acts but leaves them [to] stand up again to resume their criminal acts,” Hakim said through an interpreter. “This means that there is something wrong in the policies taken to deal with that danger threatening the lives of the Iraqis.”

It’s obvious to Hakim that to prevent a civil war, you wipe out the present and potential combatants on the other side. He labels those as Al Qaeda (a small group, despite its penchant for spectacular terror), Takfiris and Baathists, which could mean a very wide range of Sunnis. “Otherwise, we'll continue to witness massacres being committed every now and then against the innocent Iraqis,” said Hakim, presumably meaning Shiites. And if the United States won’t do the job, well, then somebody has to. “Patience has its limits,” said Hakim. “I am afraid that someday the Shiite religious authorities might lose their ability to calm down the reaction to the continuous sectarian cleansing attack.”

Of course Hakim slipped by the question of the many Shiite death squads that already have made slaughtering Sunnis a major industry. Many are believed to be from his own organization, operating as part of the existing Iraqi government forces. “Such things that have been mentioned against us are just allegations and false accusations,” said Hakim.

Anyone who sifts the platitudes of this Islamic revolutionary can see his vision of Iraq’s democratic future is for rule by a Shiite majority that answers to clerical guidance. Uninvited (meaning Jordanian, Turkish, Kuwaiti, Syrian or Saudi) outsiders will be excluded while security cooperation with friends—meaning Iran—is encouraged. Hakim says his organization is legal, and its militias have been integrated into (others would say taken over) government units. Illegal militias, as defined in an order signed by U.S. proconsul Paul Bremer shortly before he left Iraq in 2004, are to be done away with.

That would include especially those of Hakim’s rival warlord, Moqtada al-Sadr . As a Hakim supporter in the government told me privately the other day, "Moqtada should be behind bars, underground or across the border—those are the three options he has—and a fourth one is for him to behave. The U.S. doesn't need to tackle him. They don't need to do the dirty work. We will do the dirty work. They should stay over the horizon."

Indeed, that could well become the model for the whole war, and we shouldn’t pretend to be surprised. This is an old tradition. Democracy in El Salvador, such as it is, was made possible by right-wing death squads operating “over the horizon” to obliterate the guerrillas’ urban infrastructure. The dying Augusto Pinochet still has supporters in Chile. They believe his American-backed savagery cleared the path for the present democracy.

But there’s a particular irony in Iraq. As respected Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld pointed out when I called him at Hebrew University in Jerusalem the other day, the notion that Americans can teach Iraqis the brutal arts of counterinsurgency is at best improbable. “I think that this whole idea of Americans training Arabs is so silly I cannot take it seriously,” said Van Creveld, whose new book, “The Changing Face of War” ( Presidio ), will be out early next year.
If winning hearts and minds is supposed to be part of the plan, then the U.S. troops just don’t have the means. They don’t speak Arabic, they don’t understand the culture, they don’t share the faith, they don’t know the history. Van Creveld doesn’t mince his words: “The American military have proved totally incompetent.”

The United States, grabbing here and there for a politically correct model to control the chaos, has only engendered more bloodshed. Most Iraqis want us gone, according to the polls, and the U.S. trainers giving instruction in combat techniques eventually will see that knowledge turned against us by their students. “All they really teach is how to fight Americans,” says Van Creveld. How stupid can they be?”

The essential point is that Iraqis on all sides of the divide think they know precisely what an effective counterinsurgency campaign looks like, and it’s not the relatively fastidious one the U.S. would have them wage. “The Iraqis under Saddam [Hussein] were world champions at counterinsurgency,” notes Van Creveld. The former dictator has been standing trial, and already has received one death sentence, for doing what he thought needed to be done to crush rebellions by Shiites and Kurds—and it worked. Now the United States has turned the tables, the former victims don’t want to be held back. “Maybe they are not trained in the American sense, but they are very well trained to do what they have to do in Iraq,” said Van Creveld.

The sad fact is that insurgencies are defeated only rarely, and then by imposing the peace of the grave on hundreds of thousands if not millions of people. How much more can Washington let itself be implicated in such carnage? How far over the horizon do American troops need to pull back to escape the stench of such a victory? One answer: all the way home.


3. This Is What We've Been Waiting For?
The false premise of the Iraq Study Group Report.
By Shmuel Rosner

Here's a question that the Baker-Hamilton committee report didn't completely address: What happens if its new approach doesn't work?

Because all signs show that it will not. The examples are almost endless, especially when it comes to the much-hyped "regional approach" to the Iraq conflict. "The United States cannot achieve its goals in the Middle East unless it deals directly with the Arab-Israeli conflict," the committee states. This is not a surprising or new approach by American policy-makers (or advisers, or committee members). In fact, it was the policy of all American administrations until the Bush administration turned it on its head and decided that the Arab-Israeli conflict was not the cause of the core problem of the Middle East, but rather one of its results.

Nevertheless—and however inconvenient this might seem for an Israeli government—the Baker-Hamilton position on the centrality of the Arab-Israeli conflict is viable and can easily be justified. But troubles emerge as soon as you delve into the practical recommendations regarding the "renewed and sustained commitment by the United States to a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace on all fronts"—the most important of the committee's recommendations, other than those dealing directly with managing the troops in Iraq.

More than anything else, these proposals are no more than a reiteration of the old James Baker formula for peace. A formula—just take a look at the region—that was not entirely successful in achieving its goals of peace and stability for Israel and its Arab neighbors. "Henry Kissinger says the war in Iraq is unwinnable," joked Jay Leno a couple of nights ago. "And if anybody knows how not to win a war, it's Henry Kissinger."

Try this joke with James Baker and the Middle East peace, and it works pretty well—but the formula the committee outlines reads more like an ego trip than a serious, new proposal. "This approach worked effectively in the early 1990s," the committee states. (Remember who was secretary of state in the early 1990s?) It also says, "The purpose of these meetings would be to negotiate peace as was done at the Madrid Conference in 1991." (And who was the chief facilitator of the Madrid summit?)

But dig deeper, you find flaws in the case for a regional summit everywhere. The recommendations regarding Syria, to give one example, are astonishing. The United States and Israel have refused to engage Syria in peace talks—and it seems as if the committee is ready to recommend a new approach of re-engagement. Or at least this is how the need-to-make-a-headline-out-of-it media have interpreted the report.

But what barriers does the committee set for the Syrians? "Some elements of that negotiated peace should be: Syria's full cooperation with all investigations into political assassinations in Lebanon. A verifiable cessation of Syrian aid to Hezbollah. Syria's use of its influence with Hamas and Hezbollah for the release of the captured Israeli Defense Force soldiers. A verifiable cessation of Syrian efforts to undermine the democratically elected government of Lebanon."

Amazingly enough, this is as similar as one can get to the stated goals of the Bush administration. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told the United Nations that "we call upon every state, especially Iran and Syria, to respect the sovereignty of the Lebanese government." Just last week, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley said:

Here is Syria, which is clearly putting pressure on the Lebanese democracy, is a supporter of terror, is both provisioning and supporting Hezbollah and facilitating Iran in its efforts to support Hezbollah, is supporting the activities of Hamas. This is not a Syria that is on an agenda to bring peace and stability to the region, and I think [Israeli] Prime Minister [Ehud] Olmert said, under those circumstances, with that kind of Syrian policy, how can you talk about negotiating on the Golan Heights? Seems to me that's a sensible position.

So, the one difference between the committee's proposals and the current administration policy is this: You refuse to engage Syria until it agrees to these reasonable demands—or you engage Syria first and then insist that it accepts these demands. Which brings me back to the question that opened this article: What do you do if the Syrians refuse to show positive signs of cooperation? Do you keep talking? Do you give up on your demands? Do you withdraw your negotiating team—waiting for the next committee to recommend yet another trial?

A U.S. administration official I spoke to a couple of days ago expressed anxiety that the report might create what he called a "false debate." He was proved right.

A public-opinion poll released today by the Program on International Policy Attitudes asked if "it is a good idea or bad idea for the US to have talks with Iran?" and got the most predictable answer: Seventy-five percent believed it to be "a good idea." Asking the same about Syria provided the exact same result.

The debate is indeed false, since it doesn't address the most probable outcome of the committee's recommendations: The Syrians will not cooperate, the U.N. Security Council will not convince the Iranians to give up on their nuclear program, and the Iraqi military will not be ready to assume power in the country. And then what?


4. The Fantasies of the Baker Report -- by Matthew Rothschild/The Progressive

The Baker Report is based on a central fantasy: that magically, within a year, the Iraqi Army will be able to take over most of the fighting from U.S. combat forces.

There is no basis for that, though.

Iraq barely has a functioning Army today, and U.S. forces have been trying to bolster it for three and a half years now. Many of the units don’t even show up for duty. And when they do, they often don’t perform well. The police forces are even worse, as the Iraq Study Group acknowledges. And each ministry, bizarrely, has its own protection force.
Just because James Baker and Lee Hamilton have spoken doesn’t mean the rest of us have to shut up and get in line.

The allegiances of many of these security forces are less to the Iraqi government than to their own sectarian groups and militias. In fact, some of the same people are in the militias.

The idea that all of a sudden, with some embedding, the U.S. will be able to transform the Iraqi Army and police is fanciful.

But that’s the whole megillah: “The primary mission of U.S. forces in Iraq should evolve to one of supporting the Iraqi army, which would take primary responsibility for combat operations,” the report says. “By the first quarter of 2008, subject to unexpected developments in the security situation on the ground, all combat brigades not necessary for force protection could be out of Iraq.”

But why should a deterioration in the security situation on the ground be anything but totally expected at this point? It’s been deteriorating steadily all along.

And the report asks way too much of Prime Minister Maliki. As the report notes, most of the violence stems not from Al Qaeda but from sectarian militias. “Sunni insurgents will not lay down arms unless the Shia militias are disarmed. Shia militias will not disarm until the Sunni insurgency is destroyed. To put it simply: There are many armed groups within Iraq, and very little will to lay down arms.”

Yet the report says that Maliki should complete the implementation of a law to disarm the militias by May 2007. That seems ludicrous. Maliki has no power to disarm the militias; in fact, his ability to stay in power depends on the support of Muqtada Al-Sadr, who has the biggest militia in the country—60,000 strong. And the incentive for all the militias is to keep their weapons, especially since the Baker Report acknowledges that U.S. forces can’t stay there forever.

By setting Maliki up for failure, the Baker Report is giving Bush a way out.

“If the Iraqi government does not make substantial progress toward the achievement of milestones on national reconciliation, security, and governance, the United States should reduce its political, military, or economic support for the Iraqi government,” the report notes.

The economic milestones will also be difficult to attain, as the Baker Report prescribes more bitter IMF pills for the people of Iraq to keep swallowing.

“The Iraqi government has also made progress in meeting benchmarks set by the International Monetary Fund,” it states. “Most prominently, subsidies have been reduced—for instance, the price per liter of gas has increased from roughly 1.7 cents to 23 cents.” That more than ten-fold increase in price has not been met with glee by the Iraqi people. But there’s more to come. “Iraq will continue increasing domestic prices for refined petroleum products,” the report dictates. It also calls for U.S. energy firms to enter the Iraqi oil sector.

This economic policy will only impose more hardship on the Iraqi people, which will increase their hatred of the U.S. occupation force—and the government that does its bidding.

The Baker Report tries to have it both ways on some crucial issues. While it says it is against a large increase in troops, it then says it “could, however, support a short-term redeployment or surge of American combat forces to stabilize Baghdad, or to speed up the training and equipping mission.”

And while it echoes John Kerry’s 2004 campaign comment that “the President should state that the United States does not seek permanent military bases in Iraq,” the report in the next sentence adds: “If the Iraqi government were to request a temporary base or bases, then the U.S. government could consider that request as it would in the case of any other government.”

At least the Baker Report acknowledges that the situation is “grave and deteriorating,” though. The goal is no longer “total victory,” as Bush put it so often, but now something much less than that: to “avert anarchy,” “avert catastrophe,” stave off further “chaos” and “the potential for catastrophe,” and prevent “a sectarian conflict” that “could open a Pandora’s box of problems.” The report could barely be more apocalyptical.

And it does make two solid criticisms of the Bush Administration toward the end.

First, it notes that the Administration, which has already spent about $400 billion on this war, has been “bypassing the normal review” of Pentagon expenditures for it. “Most of the costs of the war show up not in the normal budget request but in requests for emergency supplemental appropriations,” it says. This “erodes budget discipline and accountability.”

Second, it notes that “there is significant underreporting of the violence in Iraq.” It cites one day in July when the Pentagon reported 93 attacks or significant acts of violence when, in fact, there were 1,100. Acidly, the report adds: “Good policy is difficult to make when information is systematically collected in a way that minimizes its discrepancy with policy goals.”

But having made its criticisms on the margins, the Baker Report is trying to silence others about the fundamentals.

“Success depends on the unity of the American people in a time of political polarization,” James Baker and Lee Hamilton declare in their opening note. “Americans can and must enjoy right of robust debate within a democracy. Yet U.S foreign policy is doomed to failure—as is any course of action in Iraq—if it is not supported by a broad, sustained consensus.”

That’s a bunch of crap.

The U.S. is going to fail there regardless of dissent here. And the Baker Report should not be used as a gag in the mouths of the majority of Americans who want all troops out within a year.

Just because James Baker and Lee Hamilton have spoken doesn’t mean the rest of us have to shut up and get in line.

(Matthew Rothschild is the editor of The Progressive magazine.)


5. A Very Bad Idea -- by John Nichols/The Nation

There are some sound ideas contained in the Iraq Study Group report that was finally released after weeks of leaks this morning. The confirmation that the circumstance in Iraq is "grave" and rapidly deteriorating, while not exactly news, is important -- especially coming a day after President Bush's nominee for secretary of defense acknowledged that the United States is most definitely not "winning" the war in Iraq. For those in the Bush administration and its media echo chamber who as recently as a few days ago were prattling on about how successful the mission really is, this is a necessary dose of reality.

So, too, is the recognition by the ISG members that, "The United States cannot achieve its goals in the Middle East unless it deals with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and regional instability." The reports call for an intense and comprehensive diplomatic initiative to resolve disputes between the Israelis and the Palestinian inserts regional realism into a discussion that has been largely devoid of that essential component.

The same goes for the emphasis on diplomacy, particularly as regards relations with Syria and Iran, that is the critical focus of the report from the commission headed by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Congressman Lee Hamilton. If there is to be a serious exit strategy for U.S. forces, it is going to require support and involvement from other countries in the region.

But, for all the encouraging bows toward reality that can be found in the 142-page-long report, "The Way Forward: A New Approach," there are also some deeply troubling proposals contained the 79 recommendations made by Baker, Hamilton and their compatriots. This is especially true of a core recommendation of the report: "The primary mission of U.S. forces should evolve to one of supporting the Iraqi army."

On the surface, and especially coming in the context of the suggestion that the U.S. military presence in Iraq should be drawn down, that may sound smart. In reality, it's a recipe for more disaster.

The report says, "By the first quarter of 2008, subject to unexpected developments in the security situation on the ground, all combat brigades not necessary for force protection could be out of Iraq."

So far, so good.

But, the report then adds, "At that time, U.S. combat forces in Iraq could be deployed only in units embedded with Iraqi forces, in rapid-reaction and special operations teams and in training, equipping, advising, force protection and search and rescue."

Retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Peters, who has written extensively on the Iraq imbroglio, says, embedding U.S. troops in this manner creates "tens of thousands of hostages in uniform."

Actually, that's a nice way of putting it.

Considering the condition of the Iraqi Army -- which could charitably be described as "fully dysfunctional" -- and the likelihood that if the Iraqi military moves into a more high-profile position its units will become the primary targets of the insurgency, this scheme could actually get more Americans killed. In particular, it could set up precisely the sort of "Blackhawk Down" scenarios where very bad things happen to Americans, and those developments then become excuses for dispatching more U.S. troops to danger zones. In effect, the embedding of substantial numbers of Americans in Iraqi military units could establish the slippery slope on which positive steps toward the withdrawal of U.S. forces end up being reversed.

Perhaps worst of all, the embedding of U.S. troops within Iraqi units opens up the prospect that Americans will come to be seen as siding with the ethnic grouping that eventually will dominate the military. If that happens, the choice to embed U.S. units could harm rather than help prospects for diplomatic solutions, as it will stir concerns among neighboring countries that are aligned with -- or, at least, sympathetic to -- Iraq's Sunni and Shia communities.

James Baker says that staying the course in Iraq is "no longer viable."

He's right. But the key is to make a proper change of course -- one that aims for a full withdrawal of U.S. forces from the country -- rather than one that could, as remarkable as this may seem, make things worse.

(John Nichols covered the first Persian Gulf War in 1991 and has reported extensively from Israel, Palestine, Jordan and other Middle East countries.)


6. So Much for Plan B The Iraq Study Group chickens out.
By Fred Kaplan

So many careers and reputations have been ravaged by Iraq. Even James Baker, the canniest of operators, has now met his Waterloo.

The report of the Iraq Study Group—which Baker co-chaired with Lee Hamilton, that other Wise Man-wannabe—was doomed to fall short of expectations. But who knew it would amount to such an amorphous, equivocal grab bag.

Its outline of a new "diplomatic offensive" is so disjointed that even a willing president would be left puzzled by what precisely to do, and George W. Bush seems far from willing.

Its scheme for a new military strategy contains so many loopholes that a president could cite its language to justify doing anything (or nothing).

Contrary to the leaks of the last several days, the report does not call for a pullback of American forces in Iraq. One and a half sentences in the executive summary seem to do that: "By the first quarter of 2008 … all combat brigades not necessary for force protection could be out of Iraq. At that time, U.S. combat forces in Iraq could be deployed only in units embedded with Iraqi forces."

First, notice that the verb in those passages is "could," not "should." But read that half-sentence in full, and then read on:

At that time, U.S. combat forces in Iraq could be deployed only in units embedded with Iraqi forces, in rapid-reaction and special operations teams, and in training, equipping, advising, force protection, and search and rescue. Intelligence and support efforts would continue.

In other words, the commission does not say that U.S. combat forces should be deployed " only in units embedded with Iraqi forces." It says they should (or, rather, "could") be deployed "only" in Iraqi units and all those other kinds of units, too.

The meaning of "special operations teams" is clear: They're the Delta forces, SEALS, and other shadow soldiers currently chasing down al-Qaida forces and other terrorists. But what is the definition of "rapid reaction" teams? Anything a president or commander wants it to be. How many troops are needed for rapid reaction? As few or as many as he'd like. Ditto, by the way, for "force protection," "search and rescue," and "intelligence and support efforts."

On Page 73, the report's authors go further still:

"We could support a short-term redeployment or surge of American combat forces to stabilize Baghdad, or to speed up the training and equipping missions, if the U.S. commander in Iraq determines that such steps would be effective."

If President Bush wants to pour more troops into Iraq, he could cite this passage to support the increase. What does "short-term" mean, in this context? A week, a month, a year, five years? Again, it means whatever the president (or his commander) wants it to mean.

These extra troops, by the way, would be in addition to the 10,000 or so extra troops that the report explicitly recommends sending as advisers embedded inside Iraqi combat units. At this morning's press conference, one of Baker's commissioners—William Perry, a former secretary of defense in the Clinton administration—said these advisers might be taken from U.S. combat brigades currently in Iraq. But this seems unlikely. The 1 st Infantry Division in Fort Riley, Kan., is training a new crop of advisers precisely for this mission. It's unlikely that a commander would break up an existing brigade when soldiers trained to be advisers are on their way.

In other words, the bedrock question about Iraq—whether U.S. troop levels should go up or down—is left unanswered.

The report's authors pull no such punches on the question of a diplomatic offensive. They call unequivocally for the United States to hold talks with all of Iraq's neighbors, including Iran and Syria.

But they don't address the question of why Iran and Syria should want to talk with us. More to the point, the authors sidestep the question: What might we have to give Iran and Syria in exchange for talking with us—in exchange (still more to the point) for getting us out of this mess? Baker is no naïf. When he was secretary of state under Bush's father, he had lots of diplomatic dealings with these countries. He knows that dealings involve deals ; we have to give up something to get them to do what we want. But he doesn't want to say this, because he knows that the current President Bush doesn't want to give up anything. If this Bush actually follows Baker's advice and opens up talks with Iran, he'll find this out soon enough—and then he'll back out. (For more on what the report says about Syria, see " This Is What We've Been Waiting For? " by Shmuel Rosner.)

The report's authors try to make a case that Iran and Syria will want to cooperate. They write in the executive summary, "No country in the region will benefit in the long term from a chaotic Iraq." Yet the key phrase here is "in the long term." In the short term, Iran and Syria are benefiting quite nicely from an Iraq that's mired at least somewhat in chaos.

The authors recognize this. On Page 27, they repeat the business about how nobody wants a chaotic Iraq, then they add: "Yet Iraq's neighbors are doing little to help it, and some are undercutting its stability. Iraqis complain that neighbors are meddling in their affairs. When asked which, one senior Iraqi official replied, 'All of them.' " On Pages 28 and 29, they go further: "Iran appears content for the U.S. military to be tied down in Iraq, a position that limits U.S. options in addressing Iran's nuclear program and allows Iran leverage over stability in Iraq. One Iraqi official told us, 'Iran is negotiating with the United States in the streets of Baghdad.' "

On Page 51, the authors acknowledge that the United States should offer Iran and Syria incentives, "much as it did successfully with Libya." But the Libyans had nothing to lose, and everything to gain, when they agreed to give up their nascent (and still very primitive) nuclear program. The Iranians, by contrast, have great wealth and enormous leverage, not only in the Middle East but with European and Asian countries that depend on their oil.

The authors do take a bold step here. They list a few "possible incentives" that Bush might offer Iran, among them "the prospect of a U.S. policy that emphasizes political and economic reforms instead of … regime change."

Will Bush drop his avowed desire for "regime change" in Tehran in exchange for Tehran's help in stabilizing Iraq? That's the big question. Every time it's come up so far, Bush has firmly said no. Will he make a fundamental shift now? Doubtful. And what is Tehran's view of a stable Iraq? Is it the same as Washington's view? Again, doubtful—which is one reason Bush probably won't make a shift. Maybe some compromise can be worked out, but what conditions will be set for starting, much less completing, negotiations?

The authors recommend the creation of an Iraq International Support Group, consisting of all the Gulf states, Iraq's neighbors, Egypt, the European Union, and the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. This might be a good idea, but the report musters no reasons why these countries should cooperate. The report calls on the United States to "energize countries to support national political reconciliation." It's unclear what this means.

The report is at its best, and most devastating, when it details the "grave and deteriorating" situation in Iraq. "Current U.S. policy is not working," it states bluntly. Forty percent of Iraq's population lives in "highly insecure" provinces. Iraq's military lacks leadership, personnel, equipment, and logistical support; Iraq's police force is worse still. (The army provided just two of the six battalions it promised to send to Baghdad; the police refuse to go into Sadr City.) Donor nations promised to send $13.5 billion in aid but have sent less than $4 billion. The United States is cutting its Iraqi reconstruction budget to $750 million a year, when the authors say it should be boosting this budget to $5 billion a year. The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad employs 1,000 people, but just 33 of them speak Arabic and only six do so fluently.

It's a mess. Not even Jim Baker really knows what to do about it.