A RECIPE FOR INCREASED MEDDLING:

'US policy is not working': In stark terms, study group urges major change on Iraq (Bryan Bender, December 7, 2006, Boston Globe)

[T]he panel said, the Bush administration must immediately reassign far more US troops to advise Iraqi Army units, aggressively pursue the help of Iraq's influential neighbors, and place new pressure on the Iraqi government to reach a political settlement between warring ethnic groups.

The panel, headed by former secretary of state James A. Baker III and Lee Hamilton , a former Indiana congressman, contradicts the administration's repeated claims of progress in the war, which has led to the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqis and at least 2,918 US troops since the US-led invasion in March 2003 -- including 10 more Americans yesterday.

"Current US policy is not working, as the level of violence in Iraq is rising and the government is not advancing national reconciliation," said the report. "Making no changes in policy would simply delay the day of reckoning at a high cost."

So wouldn't a genuine reversal instead speed the day of reckoning, rather than try to delay it further? It would seem Iraq would be best served if we stopped pressuring its government to do the things we want and let it settle its own scores; shift our pressure to Syria and Iran, in order to destabilize their regimes and draw off pressure from Iraq; and remove our troops, which give insurgents an artificial rallying point. The Administration's main failures ion Iraq have all come from not trusting the Iraqis to deal with their own problems. All the Commission has done is propose trusting them even less.

MORE:
'Pie in the sky' report won't fix Iraq (Peter W. Galbraith, December 7, 2006, Boston Globe)

The Iraq Study Group recommends a tough love approach to Iraq's internal problems. It proposes to condition US support to the Iraqi government on it meeting certain benchmarks. These benchmarks include constitutional revision to subordinate Iraq's virtually independent regions to control from Baghdad, revising de-Ba'athification laws to permit Saddam's supporters (who were mostly Sunni) a greater role in public life, regulating militias, and amnesty for Sunni insurgents.

Parts of this program are questionable. Iraq's 80 years as a unified state produced nonstop misery, including mass killings and genocide, for its Shi'ite majority and Kurdish minority. The new Iraqi constitution allows the Kurds, the Shi'ites, and the Sunnis to form powerful regions with their own militaries and substantial control over natural resources. It is an antidote to Iraq's deadly centralism and was adopted by nearly 80 percent of Iraq's voters. It is hard to understand why it should be gutted.

More important, however, the Baker-Hamilton program is unachievable. Kurdistan's voters would have to agree to the constitutional amendments, and having voted 98.7 percent for independence, are not likely to do so. Iraq's constitution currently prohibits militias and a law regulating them is not likely to have a greater impact. Both Shi'ites and Sunnis consider militias, and other irregular forces, essential for prosecuting the civil war. Amnesty is for losers, and the Sunni insurgents believe they are winning. They have wrested control of large parts of Sunni Iraq -- including west Baghdad -- from the US-led coalition and the Iraqi government, and bombing Shi'ite civilians has triggered a civil war. If the insurgents were prepared to trade their gains for amnesty, they would never have taken up arms in the first place.

The Realists' Repudiation Of Policies for a War, Region (Glenn Kessler and Thomas E. Ricks, December 7, 2006, Washington Post)

The Iraq Study Group report released yesterday might well be titled "The Realist Manifesto." [...]

Throughout its pages, the report reflects the foreign policy establishment's disdain for the "neoconservative" policies long espoused by President Bush and his aides. [...]

The administration's effort to spread democracy to Arab lands is not mentioned in the report, except to note briefly that most countries in the region are wary of it. The report urges direct talks with Iran and Syria, both of which the administration has largely shunned.

Baker-Hamilton Does Its Job (David Ignatius, December 7, 2006, Washington Post)

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.

A Blueprint for Iraq: Will It Work in the White House? (SHERYL GAY STOLBERG, 12/07/06, NY Times)

“In a sense,” said Dennis Ross, who worked for both President Clinton and the first President Bush as a Middle East envoy, “what you have here offers the Democrats a ready handle to show, ‘We’re prepared to be bipartisan on the issue of Iraq, because we’ll embrace the bipartisan Iraq Study Group — are you prepared to be bipartisan as well?’ ”

The study group, for instance, calls for direct engagement with Iran and Syria; so far, Mr. Bush has refused.

Threats Wrapped in Misunderstandings (Sudarsan Raghavan, December 7, 2006, Washington Post)

The Iraq Study Group's prescriptions hinge on a fragile Iraqi government's ability to achieve national reconciliation and security at a time when the country is fractured along sectarian lines, its security forces are ineffective and competing visions threaten to collapse the state, Iraqi politicians and analysts said Wednesday.

They said the report is a recipe, backed by threats and disincentives, that neither addresses nor understands the complex forces that fuel Iraq's woes. They described it as a strategy largely to help U.S. troops return home and resurrect America's frayed influence in the Middle East.

Iraqis also expressed fear that the report's recommendations, if implemented, could weaken an already besieged government in a country teetering on the edge of civil war.

"It is a report to solve American problems, and not to solve Iraq's problems," said Ayad al-Sammarai, an influential Sunni Muslim politician.

The essence of Realism is not caring about other peoples, which is why the report relies on propping up the most totalitarian regimes in the region. Heck, Jim Baker has as much as said he would reinstate Saddam if he could. That would shut those Shi'a up....

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 7, 2006 8:13 AM