Saving Face
The Iraq Study Group report is finished and will be officially released next week. Almost from the start information on the proceedings was leaked to the press, so it comes as no surprise that the conclusions of the group have also been made available. If what is being reported is accurate, the President will be urged to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq (although to where is not clear, and no timetable is being proposed) and to engage in diplomacy with countries in the region (including Syria and Iran) to help stop the current carnage. For the most part, the report appears to be steering a safe middle course between the current policy (we're staying) and the desires of the Democrats (we're leaving). From the NY Times:
As described by the people involved in the deliberations, the bulk of the report by the Baker-Hamilton group focused on a recommendation that the United States devise a far more aggressive diplomatic initiative in the Middle East than Mr. Bush has been willing to try so far, including direct engagement with Iran and Syria. Initially, those contacts might be part of a regional conference on Iraq or broader Middle East peace issues, like the Israeli-Palestinian situation, but they would ultimately involve direct, high-level talks with Tehran and Damascus.
Mr. Bush has rejected such contacts until now, and he has also rejected withdrawal, declaring in Riga, Latvia, on Tuesday that while he will show flexibility, “there’s one thing I’m not going to do: I’m not going to pull the troops off the battlefield before the mission is complete.”
Commission members have said in recent days that they had to navigate around such declarations, or, as one said, “We had to move the national debate from whether to stay the course to how do we start down the path out.”
...The report also would offer military commanders — and therefore the president — great flexibility to determine the timing and phasing of the pullback of the combat brigades.
Throughout the debates, Mr. Baker, who served as secretary of state under Mr. Bush’s father and was the central figure in developing the strategy to win the 2000 Florida recount for Mr. Bush, was highly reluctant to allow a timetable for withdrawal to be included in the report, participants said.
Mr. Baker cited what Mr. Bush had also called a danger: that any firm deadline would be an invitation to insurgents and sectarian groups to bide their time until the last American troops were withdrawn, then seek to overthrow the government. But Democrats on the commission also suspected that Mr. Baker was reluctant to embarrass the president by embracing a strategy Mr. Bush had repeatedly rejected. [Emphasis added]
In other words, the report has been shaped by a desire not to make the President angry or to look bad. I suppose an argument can be made that riling Mr. Bush up would only serve to make him dig his heels in further. After all, even in the midst of all the leaks on the group's proceedings that pretty much made it clear that a troop pullback and talks with Iran and Syria were going to be proposed, Mr. Bush made it a point wherever he was to insist that the US was not going to leave until the mission was accomplished and that he was not going to talk to either country until they buckled down to US demands on other issues.
However, the group was formed at the request of Congress to come up recommendations for getting the US out of this mess, not to save a stubborn, immature, and apparently stupid man's feelings. A just and effective foreign policy should not be run on the basis of keeping the President happy or looking good.
Apparently it is going to be up to the next Congress to find a way to force the President to do the just and honorable thing.
As described by the people involved in the deliberations, the bulk of the report by the Baker-Hamilton group focused on a recommendation that the United States devise a far more aggressive diplomatic initiative in the Middle East than Mr. Bush has been willing to try so far, including direct engagement with Iran and Syria. Initially, those contacts might be part of a regional conference on Iraq or broader Middle East peace issues, like the Israeli-Palestinian situation, but they would ultimately involve direct, high-level talks with Tehran and Damascus.
Mr. Bush has rejected such contacts until now, and he has also rejected withdrawal, declaring in Riga, Latvia, on Tuesday that while he will show flexibility, “there’s one thing I’m not going to do: I’m not going to pull the troops off the battlefield before the mission is complete.”
Commission members have said in recent days that they had to navigate around such declarations, or, as one said, “We had to move the national debate from whether to stay the course to how do we start down the path out.”
...The report also would offer military commanders — and therefore the president — great flexibility to determine the timing and phasing of the pullback of the combat brigades.
Throughout the debates, Mr. Baker, who served as secretary of state under Mr. Bush’s father and was the central figure in developing the strategy to win the 2000 Florida recount for Mr. Bush, was highly reluctant to allow a timetable for withdrawal to be included in the report, participants said.
Mr. Baker cited what Mr. Bush had also called a danger: that any firm deadline would be an invitation to insurgents and sectarian groups to bide their time until the last American troops were withdrawn, then seek to overthrow the government. But Democrats on the commission also suspected that Mr. Baker was reluctant to embarrass the president by embracing a strategy Mr. Bush had repeatedly rejected. [Emphasis added]
In other words, the report has been shaped by a desire not to make the President angry or to look bad. I suppose an argument can be made that riling Mr. Bush up would only serve to make him dig his heels in further. After all, even in the midst of all the leaks on the group's proceedings that pretty much made it clear that a troop pullback and talks with Iran and Syria were going to be proposed, Mr. Bush made it a point wherever he was to insist that the US was not going to leave until the mission was accomplished and that he was not going to talk to either country until they buckled down to US demands on other issues.
However, the group was formed at the request of Congress to come up recommendations for getting the US out of this mess, not to save a stubborn, immature, and apparently stupid man's feelings. A just and effective foreign policy should not be run on the basis of keeping the President happy or looking good.
Apparently it is going to be up to the next Congress to find a way to force the President to do the just and honorable thing.
Labels: Iraq Study Group, Iraq War
posted by Diane at 1:05 PM
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