Well said. I'm still waiting for the explanation of why Sunnis are shooting Shi'ites in the back of the head because of what Israel does to other Arabs. Or why Iran, invaded by a strong Iraq, would not want the bloody chaos there to extend indefinitely.
A Commission’s Folly
FrontPageMagazine.com
December 7, 2006
Headed by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Rep. Lee Hamilton, the Iraq Study Group issued its highly anticipated report yesterday, stating that the “situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating” and “violence is increasing in scope and lethality.” So far, the obvious. While not an absolute failure, as some analysts assert, the ISG report is nonetheless a self-contradictory mix of recommendations that affirms some of President Bush’s Iraq policy in the short term, while threatening to undermine the War on Terror by calling for a “new diplomatic offensive” [1] that will only empower Iran, Syria and, by extension, their terrorist proxies who are responsible for the “scope and lethality” of Iraqi violence.
...
Already, terrorists are rejoicing at the report, calling the new plan a victory for “Islamic resistance.” Hamas asset Abu Abdullah exclaimed, “The big superpower of the world is defeated by a small group of mujahedeen. Did you see the mujahedeens' clothes and weapons in comparison with the huge individual military arsenal and supply that was carrying every American soldier?” In this, he sounds very much like Osama bin Laden's assessment of Vietnam, Beirut, and Mogadishu.
...
Although the report avoids confirming the prejudices of the antiwar Left in terms of withdrawal, its recommendation that the Bush administration reverse policy in regard to Iran and Syria mistakes the nature and interests of the enemy we face. On this count, moreover, the study actually contradicts itself, since it says at another point that promoting unrest in Iraq allows Iran to frustrate American aims in the region. The report calls for the immediate launch of a “diplomatic offensive” to engage Iran and Syria by appealing to “their interest in avoiding chaos in Iraq.” [4] However, bogging our forces down in Iraq and focusing international attention on the supposed failure of U.S. foreign policy particularly suits Iranian and Syrian interests. Chaos in Iraq only deflects international attention from Iran’s nuclear program as well as Iran and Syria’s covert war against Lebanon and Israel, through its terror proxy Hezbollah. For these reasons, Iran has worked so diligently to further chaos in Iraq. Why would anyone presume that they would change their way when their strategy is fnally paying off?
The other option that the report gives for engaging these two terror regimes is the use of incentives. But we have already offered both countries various economic incentives, which they have spurned. On top of this, believing that “incentives” or “disincentives” can influence Islamist fanatics like Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who avow that the United States must submit to Islam or be destroyed, is folly. Rewarding the leading state sponsors of terrorism for facilitating the killing of Americans is a recipe for increased militancy, as the terrorsts' reactions demonstrate.
The report also ridiculously demands a “sustained commitment by the United States to a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace,” including a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine. [5] How settling a sixty-year-old Arab-Jewish dispute will settle a civil war between Muslim sectarians, fueled by Iran and Syria, defies comprehension. Nor does it make sense to push for a two-state solution at a time when the Palestinians have so clearly demonstrated, in Gaza in particular, that they will merely convert any acquired territory into a staging ground for their own terrorist war against Israel. There have, in fact, been reports of al-Qaeda assets in “Palestine.”
The Left’s unremitting criticism of a war its elected officials voted to launch, fueled by its hatred of President Bush personally, has spread dissatisfaction throughout the nation and amplified the calls of those who demand we get out. Their rhetorical success has forced the president to consider quick solutions in Iraq. President Bush has repeatedly told the American public that Iraq is part of a long War on Terror, requiring sacrifice and patience. It will take time to stabilize Iraq and fend off our enemies. To declare failure and urge a significant retreat by 2008 when Iraq’s present government has only been six months in office will only embolden our enemy and hand Iraqis into the hands of those who seek to perpetrate a massive bloodbath before establishing a new Caliphate, from whence they may export terrorism to new vistas. At this stage, it will be the greatest folly for us to abandon this central front in the War on Terror and, along with it, the hope for democracy in the Middle East.
13 comments:
Naill Ferguson breaks from the consensus in this surprising take on the Iraq Study Report:
Another way to interpret this report is 'Stay but don't screw up'
Telegraph
Niall Ferguson
'Persuasion involves both incentives and penalties," Henry Kissinger once remarked. "So there is an element of implied coercion." Last week saw the publication of a masterpiece of persuasion. But whom will it persuade? And with what sticks and carrots?
Most commentators have interpreted the report of the Iraq Study Group as a well-crafted admission of defeat. Predictably, that was exactly how President Bush himself reacted to it. "I… believe we're going to succeed," he told reporters on Thursday. "I believe we'll prevail… One way to assure failure is just to quit, is not to adjust, and say it's just not worth it."
Addressing one of the report's key recommendations, he bluntly declared that Iran and Syria "shouldn't bother to show up" for negotiations about Iraq if they don't "understand their responsibilities to not fund terrorists" and if the Iranians won't "verifiably suspend" their uranium enrichment programme.
Yet anyone who bothers to read the ISG's report carefully — as opposed to skimming the executive summary — can see that it neither proposes "quitting" Iraq nor pins serious hope on Iranian or Syrian assistance. Quite the reverse.'
And for a less positive view of the report here is Matthew Parris's view:
'If you seek the weakest link in an argument — the premise in which its authors feel least confidence — look for the proposition they assert most often. Like a tongue to a sore tooth, a protagonist returns compulsively to what he has not convincingly established.
Six times in the slim Iraq Study Group report presented to the US President this week by James Baker and Lee Hamilton, the assertion that Iraq’s neighbours cannot desire chaos to continue is repeated. “No country in the region will benefit in the long term from a chaotic Iraq,” say the authors, repeatedly, in many different ways. The Baker group just cannot leave this supposition alone. They know it is hollow.
If however you seek the strongest link in an argument — the proposition its authors know to be the brutal truth — look for what they touch on most lightly: the whisper, the oh-by-the-way remark.
Only once do Baker and Hamilton engage with the cruellest question. They answer it quickly, flatly — and move on. “If,” they say, “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.”
Well that’s it, then — isn’t it? Never mind the other 78 recommendations: that’s all we need to know. Given that it is not the case that Iraq’s neighbours want to quit troublemaking, and given that, unless they do, a feeble government in Baghdad will be unable to reassert control, the ISG report is really about a timetable for American withdrawal. The withdrawal is finally unconditional. Baker says so.
All the rest is aspiration. You can almost hear the Beach Boys’ chorus Wouldn’t it be nice . . . ? as you read.
Wouldn’t it be nice . . . if Iran sat down in a regional conference and agreed to help re-create a strong, stable Iraqi nationalism? But as Iran has nightmare memories of such a force, no wish to assume control of a maelstrom of militias itself, and no conceivable interest in extricating George W. Bush from his difficulties, what’s in it for Iran?
Wouldn’t it be nice . . . if Syria joined talks and sealed its border against arms and insurgents? But as Damascus would be incapable of propping up a Sunni government in Iraq and unwilling to see a Shia one, what’s in it for Syria? Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, has more to fear from order in Iraq (overseen by Tehran) than from chaos. For each of these neighbours mayhem is of course regrettable; but for all of them it is second best; and nobody agrees what’ s best.
Wouldn’t it be nice . . . if Nouri al-Maliki’s tottering administration in Baghdad could rub an Aladdin’s lamp, turn wish to reality and gain a grip on the desperate security situation whose horrors Baker so unsparingly catalogues? But how? Baker’s only suggestion seems to be that US forces should withdraw from a combat role supporting the Iraqi Government and concentrate on helping to “train” local security forces. Isn’t that what the Americans and Mr al-Maliki have been wanting to achieve all along? US forces have not gone into battle on some kind of a whim, but to shore up a puppet government against collapse. If Baker is content for it to collapse, let him say so.'
A cartoon on the Baker Report.
I have never read this strength of language from Pipes before. "Drivel" is how he describes the report, "astonishing conceit" is the attitude of the authors, and he finishes with the following comparison:
[In 1919] Woodrow Wilson appointed two completely unqualified Americans to head a commission of inquiry to the Levant on the grounds, an aide explained, that Wilson "felt these two men were particularly qualified to go to Syria because they knew nothing about it. This know-nothing approach failed America 87 years ago and it failed again now."
I'd recommend reading this article on the web page itself, as it contains numerous links which are not reproduced here.
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James Baker's Terrible Iraq Report
by Daniel Pipes
New York Sun
December 12, 2006
The Iraq Study Group Report, cobbled together by ten individuals lacking specialized knowledge of Iraq, dredges up past failed U.S. policies in the Middle East and would enshrine them as current policy.
Most profoundly, regarding the American role in Iraq, the report moronically splits the difference of troops staying or leaving, without ever examining the basic premise of the U.S. government taking responsibility for the country's minutiae, such as its setting up public works projects. Instead, the report unthinkingly accepts that strategic assumption and only tweaks tactics at the margins.
A preposterously lengthy list of 79 recommendations lies at the heart of the report. These include such gems as bringing in the (Saudi-sponsored) Organization of the Islamic Conference or the Arab League (no. 3) to decide Iraq's future. Another creates an "Iraq International Support Group" that includes Iran, Syria (no. 5), and the United Nations secretary-general (no. 7).
Other brilliant recommendations call for the UN Security Council to handle the Iranian nuclear problem (no. 10) and for the support group to persuade Tehran to "take specific steps to improve the situation in Iraq" (no. 11). Right. The Iranian regime, whose president envisions a "world without America," will save Washington's bacon. Such counsel smacks at best of what the Jerusalem Post calls "staggering naïveté" and at worst of ghastly foolishness.
Of course, small minds assert that problems in Iraq are "inextricably linked" to the Arab-Israeli conflict – thereby repeating the precise mistake that lead co-chairman James A. Baker, III, made in 1991. He then led the effort to abandon the Persian Gulf and turn to the Palestinians, leaving Saddam Hussein in power for another dozen years and contributing directly to the present mess. In the new report, Mr. Baker and his colleagues call for a Palestinian state (no. 12) and even demand that a final settlement address the Palestinian "right of return" (no. 17) – code for dismantling the Jewish state. They peremptorily declare that "the Israelis should return the Golan Heights," in return for a U.S. security guarantee (no. 16).
Besides the astonishing conceit of these Olympian declarations, one wonders how exactly the Iraqi civil war would be ended by pleasing the Palestinian Arabs. Or why the unresolved Arab-Israeli conflict is any more relevant to Iraq than the unresolved Azeri-Armenian conflict, which is closer to Iraq.
To make matters worse, Mr. Baker had the nerve to admonish the Bush administration not to treat the report's 79 recommendations "like a fruit salad," choosing one idea while rejecting another, but to accept it as a whole. Even in Washington, a town famous for arrogance, this statement made heads turn. That Mr. Baker and his co-chairman, Lee Hamilton, sat for a picture spread with famed photographer Annie Liebovitz for Men's Vogue, a fashion magazine, only confirms the vacuity of their effort, as does their hiring the giant public relations firm, Edelman.
In all, the Iraq Study Group Report offers a unique combination of bureaucratic caution, false bi-partisanship, trite analysis, and conventional bromides.
Although the press reacted to this drivel, in the words of Daniel Henninger writing in the Wall Street Journal, with "neurotic glee," Robert Kagan and William Kristol deemed it "dead on arrival," and Iraq's president, Jalal Talabani, called it "dead in the water." One hopes they are right, that President George W. Bush ignores its recommendations, and that this "new lipstick on a very old pig" (Spencer Ackerman) quickly disappears from sight.
That's not to say that Mr. Bush should "stay the course," for that course has not worked. A host of creative ideas have been floated by individuals knowledgeable about Iraq, sympathetic to the administration's goal of building a free, democratic, and prosperous Iraq, and not tempted to see their role as an exercise in preening. The White House should call on these talented individuals to brainstorm, argue, and emerge with some useful ideas about the future American role in Iraq.
Doing so means breaking with a presidential tradition, going back at least to 1919, of what I call a "know-nothing" Middle East diplomacy. Woodrow Wilson appointed two completely unqualified Americans to head a commission of inquiry to the Levant on the grounds, an aide explained, that Wilson "felt these two men were particularly qualified to go to Syria because they knew nothing about it." This know-nothing approach failed America 87 years ago and it failed again now.
I believe the phrase "mother-fucking son of a diseased whore" was invented for such occasions.
Baker wants Israel excluded from regional conference
Insight Mag
Issue Dec. 5-11, 2006
The White House has been examining a proposal by James Baker to launch a Middle East peace effort without Israel. The peace effort would begin with a U.S.-organized conference, dubbed Madrid-2, and contain such U.S. adversaries as Iran and Syria. Officials said Madrid-2 would be promoted as a forum to discuss Iraq's future, but actually focus on Arab demands for Israel to withdraw from territories captured in the 1967 war. They said Israel would not be invited to the conference.
“As Baker sees this, the conference would provide a unique opportunity for the United States to strike a deal without Jewish pressure,” an official said. “This has become the most hottest proposal examined by the foreign policy people over the last month.”
Not the same thing at all.
Syria and Iran are actively encouraging turmoil in Iraq, it is in their interests to see this continue and increase*, one of the major reasons for the Yanks to go in there was to change the balance of power away from countries supporting international terrorism (exemplified by these two), so to offer them concessions in the hope they'll condescend to being a bit less of a nuisance is an abject surrender to the forces of evil.
Israel by contrast actually wants peace in its territories and in general acts legitimately and from good motives. To include murderous liars in the discussion of the future of Israel but to exclude the one reasonably honest broker is unacceptable.
* it never ceases to amaze me how commentators keep missing this point. Many parts of Iraq are in a bad state right now, and that is exactly how Syria and Iran want it, and want it to stay.
Just out of interest if fellow Bloggers had been asked to give their own report on Iraq what would there conclusions and recommendations be?
Speaking personally I'm not sure what my report would be. I was ambivalent about the invasion at the start. While I could see that getting rid of Saddam seemed was an unqualified good I was apprehensive about the unpredictable long term effects. That being said, there was a time when I thought I had been overcautious and that Blair and Bush would be proved right after all.
Now?
Well it seems that as time goes by the justifications for the invasion become weaker and weaker.
WMD... we didn't find any.
Democracy building in the Middle East... a misguided failure.
Stability in the Middle East... it seems to be more unstable since the invasion not less.
I recently read a piece on a Swedish economist's blog that added to my apprehension. According to this Blogger the U.S backed Government of Iraq condemns Israel (and like all Arab countries except Egypt and Jordan have complete trade embargo and no diplomatic relations) They also condemned Denmark over the cartoons. Lastly they have close ties with Iran and praised Ayatollah Khamenei and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a "wise administration" and back it's nuclear program.
The situation in Iraq confuses me a little: What is the long term objective now? What conditions should be meet for us to leave? What is the time frame for occupation?
Answers on a postcard.
Couple of mull-over points.
As far as WMDs, go, there's a lot more to it than made the headlines:
Found: Saddam's WMDs
Kenneth R. Timmerman
FrontPage magazine.com
April 28, 2004
Moreover Saddam was most certainly in breach of the relevant UN Resolutions and was certainly *acting* (indeed, may have himself believed) that he had more WMDs than were found:
Saddam's delusions
Finally old Christopher Hitchens came up with some plus points a while back. How many of these do you think have been unvalidated since?
A War to be Proud Of
'Finally old Christopher Hitchens came up with some plus points a while back. How many of these do you think have been unvalidated since?'
I'm not sure. Looking at the comments I noticed that you felt that a critique of the Hitchen's article had reduced Hitch's 10 points to 'more like a 6/7'. Of Hitch's remaining plus points some of them have taken a bit of a knocking since then.
*(4)The agreement by the United Nations that its own reform is necessary and overdue, and the unmasking of a quasi-criminal network within its elite.
Andy: I'm not sure how much nearer to reform of the UN we are now.
*(8)The related encouragement of democratic and civil society movements in Egypt, Syria, and most notably Lebanon, which has regained a version of its autonomy.
Andy: The West seems less optimistic about the spread of democracy and civil society now, including in Lebanon.
*(10) The training and hardening of many thousands of American servicemen and women in a battle against the forces of nihilism and absolutism, which training and hardening will surely be of great use in future combat.
Andy: It feels like the war in Iraq has softened the West's will and resolve not hardened it for future combats. The recent mid term elections in the USA where seen as a judgement from American voters on the situation in Iraq.
The noted military historian is cautiously optimistic, rather than gung-ho as the headline suggests.
50,000 more US troops can save Iraq
Telegraph Comment
John Keegan
03/01/2007
You're quite right Wembley, without political will and staying power it's all for nought. I've seen comparisons with the pacification in Malaya, but that apparently took many many years, and the timescales we're looking at here might be just a few months.
There is of course the cynical possibility that the whole idea is to land the *next* president with the ignominy of withdrawal.
:-(
Hitch on the surge:
The Iraq Jinx - How Bush is blowing our last chance.
'The critical thing about the much-bruited surge is that it, too, belongs in the all-important realm of the symbolic. A few thousand extra troops in Baghdad and in Anbar are of scant use in themselves, unless they in some way represent a commitment to stick to Iraq no matter what. And if the Iraq to which they stick is in fact symbolized by Maliki's surly confessional regime, then the United States is not baby-sitting a civil war so much as deciding to take part in it. The president conceded as much when he said that new patrols in Baghdad would not be determined by sectarian calculations: Such an assurance would not be necessary if the contingency itself—or the symbolic perception of it—was not so strongly present in people's minds. In these conditions, it's almost perfect that the Democrats have been discussing a symbolic vote against the surge (you cannot beat these people for moral courage), while our new secretary of defense seems to believe that what the surge really symbolizes is a renewed determination to hand over to the Iraqis and start drawing down—as near to a flat contradiction in terms as you could wish.
During the war in Kosovo, I shared a flagon of slivovitz with an especially triumphalist Kosovar Albanian who exulted at what he was seeing. Decades of being pushed around and ground down by the Serbian supremacists and then, suddenly, "Guess what? We get to f--- the Serbs and to do it with Clinton's dick!" (That twice-repulsive image took up a horrible tenancy in the trashy attic of my mind, where it is still lodged.) Matters in Kosovo had been allowed to decay to the point where one either had to watch the cleansing of the whole province by Slobodan Milosevic or, yes, allow NATO and the U.S. Air Force to become, in effect, the air force of the Kosovo Liberation Army. On balance, the latter option was better, while the geographical and demographic scale of the problem was more manageable. Matters in Iraq have degenerated much faster and much more radically than that; now the Shiite majority wants to screw the Sunnis with Bush's (more monogamous, for what that's worth) member. The picture is hardly a prettier one.'
The current Iraq inquiry in the UK provides another reason to look again at some of the assertions and arguments of the British and American governments. Here is Paul Wolfowitz Deputy Secretary of Defense testifying to the House Budget Committee in 2003:
"There's been a good deal of comment, some of it quite outlandish, about what our postwar requirements might be in Iraq. That great Yankee catcher and occasional philosopher, Yogi Berra, once observed that it's dangerous to make predictions - especially about the future. That piece of wise advice certainly applies to predictions about wars and their aftermath, and I am reluctant to try to predict anything about what the cost of a possible conflict in Iraq would be, or what the possible cost of reconstructing and stabilising that country afterwards might be.
But some of the higher-end predictions that we have been hearing recently, such as the notion that it will take several hundred thousand US troops to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq are wildly off the mark. First, it's hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct a war itself and to secure the surrender of Saddam's security forces and his army. Hard to imagine.
Second ... there are other differences that suggest that peacekeeping requirements in Iraq might be much lower than historical experience [in] the Balkans suggests. There has been none of the record in Iraq of ethnic militias fighting one another, that produced so much bloodshed and permanent scars in Bosnia, along with the continuing requirement for large peacekeeping forces to separate those militias. And the horrors of Iraq are very different from the horrific ethnic cleansing of Kosovars by Serbs that took place in Kosovo, and have left scars that continue to require peacekeeping forces today in Kosovo.
The slaughter in Iraq -- and it has been substantial -- has unfortunately been the slaughter of people of all ethnic and religious groups by the regime. It is equal-opportunity terror.
Third, whatever numbers are required -- and I emphasize, I'm not trying to make a prediction -- but I will say there is no reason, there's simply no reason to assume that the United States will or should supply all of those forces."
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