The Iraq Study Group Report: Closing Pandora's Box

I've just finished reading about one half of the Iraq Study Group Report, which includes the Executive Summary and the Group's assessment of the present situation and problems. The remainder of the report concerns the seventy some recommendations. I'll wade through those in the next few days, but media analysis seems to have summarized the recommendations pretty well (after my own quick skim).

My first impression is that whereas my last post concerned Rumsfeld's "Too Little; Too late" memo, the Study Group's report isn't "too little," but probably "too late." It's thoughtful, reasonable and fairly comprehensive, and is the type of "post invasion plan," the country (Iraq and ours) needed three years ago. However, as things stand now, I tend to think that future policy will have to be driven not by wisdom or logic, but the unfolding events in the streets of Baghdad.

This is not to say that its recommendations should not be tried. Its a reasonable plan, with more insight than the Administration has produced in three years, with its largely vaguely goal of "staying until we win" or more recent Democratic "panic moments" that suggest withdrawing to Okinawa. But, in sum, I would give its chances for success, at this point, about the same percentage as those Americans who still support the war...30%.

So, why? Three major assumptions for success in the report are all unlikely to be achieved: a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute; some sort of regional cooperation on Iraqi stability; and the Iraqis themselves standing up for a basically secular, democratic system. None are likely, in my opinion, to be realized.

Fear is a motivation that almost instinctively "kicks-in" with the human species when its survival is threatened. Reasoned debate, civil rights, etc. do not do well in a state of fear (as Karl Rove proved in the elections of 2002 and 2004). If the American electorate was willing to turn away from these necessary prerequisites of democracy in the post 9/11 period, what makes us think the Iraqis will turn toward these prerequisites today? The more probable course is that the sectarian violence will run its course, the Sunnis will ultimately lose and that Iraq will become effectively partitioned (the Kurds in the north; the Shites in Baghdad and the south and east; the Sunnis isolated and powerless in the western province of Anbar). Perhaps, the best that may be achieved is a continuing, but extremely weak central government, kept together by an understanding by all Iraqi factions that such is preferable to a physical partition - i.e. the division of the country among its neighbors.

In the meantime, things are likely to simply continue to be brutal. One noteworthy fact in the report was that approximately 2.0 million Iraqis have already fled the country since the invasion and that many of these people (primarily Sunnis) were the backbone of the former Iraqi infrastructure. With this component of the population largely gone, Iraqi seems destined for internal chaos, religious war and the emergence of a new society of some sort over the next several generations.

The Iraq Study Group report may be more important for domestic politics than for anything it may accomplish in Iraq itself. Without pointing fingers, it chronicles the remarkable ineptitude of both policy and policy execution of the Bush Administration. Basically and very, very obviously, this is an Administration that had to be "bailed out." In 20-30 years, when the histories of this period are written, I think the general consensus will be that in the aftermath of 9/11, a "know-nothing, intellectually-challenged President," elected almost entirely on the basis of greed and fear, turned to a small radical group of neo-cons who temporarily derailed 50 some odd years of successful bi-partisan American foreign policy. And, that only their bumbling and incompetence saved us from worse.

Basically...and call it what you will, globalization, free trade, American democracy, God's Will, etc., that failed policy posed the future of the country as one of "Empire." At least, that was most of the world's perception. Afghanistan was good, old-fashioned revenge, which no one was prepared to deny us following 9/11. Iraq was aggression and Imperial ambition, which even if you agreed with it, was far, far beyond our scope and resources.

I'd like to explore all of that in future posts, but the immediate question is how will the President respond to the report? I think that he's largely been "boxed in." There are too many problems at home (foremost being homeland security) to be embarking on some "world mission." I suspect this is the consensus of "the wise men" of the Study Group, including the President's father and newly appointed Defense Secretary Gates. Rather than be driven by unreasonable White House policies and ambitions, I believe, Gates would simply resign and that resignation would be to Bush, what the firing of Archibald Cox (and the Saturday Night Massacre) was to Nixon...the beginning of impeachment.

Bush is being essentially told, "you either 'get it' or you get out."

And, broadly, in its emphasis on a return to multi-lateral diplomacy, the withdrawal of combat forces, etc. there is the underlying message of the report that neo-con influence is dead. Perhaps, that will be its greatest accomplishment...a return to sanity and a backing away from an abyss to which we came as close to as any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis.