By George F. Will
Thursday, December 7, 2006; A31
The Iraq Study Group, like the policy it was created to critique, was overtaken by the unexpectedly rapid crumbling of the U.S. position in Iraq since the ISG was formed in March. The deterioration was manifested in last week's misbegotten summit between President Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, which made brutally clear how difficult it will be to apply even the ISG's temperate recommendations to the deteriorating reality.
Summits usually do, and generally should, resemble American political conventions -- they should not be deliberative events but should ratify decisions made earlier. The ISG's recommendations must be read in light of these facts from the week during which the recommendations were being written:
Calling Iraq's prime minister "the right guy" for Iraq, Bush met him in Jordan, presumably because Iraq is too dangerous a venue for discussing how to, in Bush's words, "complete" the job. The job is to stabilize Iraq, which cannot be done without breaking the Mahdi Army, which cannot be done without bringing down Maliki, who is beholden to Moqtada al-Sadr, the cleric who more or less controls the Mahdi Army, which probably is larger and more capable than Iraq's army.
Also in the week before the ISG's report, the leaked Donald Rumsfeld memo urged policy to "go minimalist." That is generally good advice to government, but much of the rest of the memo, with its 21 "illustrative new courses of action" -- a large number, and evidence that none is especially promising -- echoed the 1960s Great Society confidence in government-engineered behavior modification: jobs programs for unemployed young Iraqis, reallocation of reconstruction funds to "stop rewarding bad behavior" and "start rewarding good behavior," and bribery ("provide money to key political and religious leaders").
It is beyond dispiriting that after 45 months of war an American official can think that this semi-genocidal conflict over the survival of groups divided about the meaning of God's will can now be dampened by clever economics. By what the ISG did not recommend -- e.g., many more troops and much more money -- it recognized that the deterioration is beyond much remediation.
When the ISG made a four-day visit to Iraq in August, its members were taken to the Green Zone, in a city so dangerous that only one ISG member -- former senator Chuck Robb, a Marine veteran of Vietnam combat -- left it, to visit Marines in the turbulent Anbar province. But, then, long before the ISG came to study it, Iraq seemed impervious to America's plans for ameliorating its dysfunctions.
The ISG's central conclusion, important to say with the group's imprimatur even though the conclusion is obvious, is that the problem with Iraq is the Iraqis, a semi-nation of peoples who are very difficult to help. The ISG's report will help accomplish what it recommends -- increase pressure on Iraq's "government" in the hope of turning it into a government by June, when Maliki says Iraq will be able to cope with its security needs.
How likely is that? Look back two years. In June 2004, at the time the Coalition Provisional Authority was to transfer sovereignty to what it thought would be an Iraqi government, Americans were toiling to finish their work of occupation: "A lawyer who had once clerked for Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist was poring over a draft edict requiring Iraqi political parties to engage in American-style financial disclosure." Such surreal vignettes abound in "Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone," by The Post's Rajiv Chandrasekaran. The book, which should be read along with the ISG report, would be hilarious were it not horrifying that so much valor and suffering have been expended in this context:
Halliburton, writes Chandrasekaran, hired Pakistanis and Indians, but no Iraqis, for kitchen work. "Nobody ever explained why, but everyone knew. They could poison the food." Of the CPA staff, "More than half, according to one estimate, had gotten their first passport in order to travel to Iraq." Two CPA staffers said that before they were hired, they were asked if they supported Roe v. Wade. The traffic code the CPA wrote for Iraq stipulated that "the driver shall hold the steering wheel with both hands" and "rest should be taken for five minutes for every one hour of driving." But Chandrasekaran's driver, who like other Iraqis had obeyed the laws under Saddam's police state, began disregarding all traffic laws. "When I asked him what he was doing, he turned to me, smiled, and said, 'Mr. Rajiv, democracy is wonderful. Now we can do whatever we want.' "
Not exactly.
Baker-Hamilton Does Its Job
By David Ignatius
Thursday, December 7, 2006; A31
DUBAI -- The Iraq Study Group's report achieved the goal of any blue-ribbon commission: It stated the obvious, emphatically.
"The situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating." Of various proposals for fixing Iraq, "all have flaws." A "precipitate" withdrawal would be a mistake, but so would a big increase in U.S. troops. America should set "milestones" for the Iraqi government to control all provinces by next September. The U.S. military should shift to a training and advising mission so that most American troops can leave by early 2008. But there is no "magic formula," and even if this approach fails, the United States "should not make an open-ended commitment to keep large numbers of American troops deployed in Iraq."
A cynic might argue that this laundry list is precisely what the Bush administration was moving toward in its own internal review of policy. But I think that's the point about the bipartisan commission headed by former secretary of state James A. Baker III and ex-representative Lee H. Hamilton. They have stamped an interwoven "D" and "R" on recommendations that seem so familiar you wonder why they haven't been official policy all along. (Some of them have been, though you wouldn't have known it from President Bush's bluff and bluster.)
What's new in the Baker-Hamilton approach is the part that's least likely to be successful -- the call for an International Support Group that, in theory, would include the regional bad boys, Iran and Syria, along with foot-draggers such as Russia, China and France. And while they're at it, Baker and Hamilton propose a crash effort to resolve the Palestinian conflict, make peace between Israel and Syria and resolve the mess in Lebanon.
I like this "New Diplomatic Offensive" precisely because it is so ambitious. It would put the United States back in the business of trying to solve the Arab-Israeli problem, which has been driving the Middle East crazy for nearly 40 years. As for Iran and Syria, the great advantage of asking them to join a global effort to stabilize Iraq is that if they say no, it's blood on their hands. As the report notes, "An Iranian refusal to do so would demonstrate to Iraq and the rest of the world Iran's rejectionist attitude and approach, which could lead to its isolation."
And what is America's leverage for bringing Iran and Syria to the table (other than the implicit threat to walk away and let them worry about the Iraqi civil war)? The report includes this delicious Bakeresque ploy: "Saudi Arabia's agreement not to intervene with assistance to Sunni Arab Iraqis could be an essential quid pro quo for similar forbearance on the part of other neighbors, especially Iran."
Aha! So that explains the unusual op-ed by quasi-official Saudi analyst Nawaf Obaid in The Post on Nov. 29 threatening that Saudi troops would be sent into Iraq if America should leave. It was a bargaining chip.
Another laudable aspect of the Baker-Hamilton report (especially in comparison with Bush's rhetoric) is that it doesn't mince words about how bad things are in Iraq. The Iraqi army has made only "fitful progress toward becoming a reliable and disciplined fighting force." The Iraqi police are "substantially worse" than the army. The results of the latest effort to pacify Baghdad have been "disheartening." Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki means well, but he "has taken little meaningful action" against militias. Sunni Arabs haven't yet "made the strategic decision to abandon violent insurgency." No reconciliation will be possible without an unpalatable amnesty for Iraqis who fought against U.S. forces. At least we are beginning to tell the truth here.
The final reason to embrace the Baker-Hamilton report is that its combination of cut-your-losses pragmatism and earnest do-gooderism will reassure the world that America has turned a page on Iraq. The level of anti-American sentiment in the Middle East these days is genuinely frightening. It has become the organizing principle of political life, even in once-friendly countries such as Lebanon. This is the real national security threat to America -- this sense in the rest of the world that Iraq symbolizes America's fatal new combination of arrogance and incompetence.
This report asks the world to help us find our way back home. Even if its proposals don't succeed, Baker-Hamilton can still accomplish its purpose, to "enable the United States to begin to move its combat forces out of Iraq responsibly."
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