Ask Santa for the Baker-Hamilton Report
The ISG is already dead on arrival to many. The neo-cons have launched a relentless attack – see the AEI’s “Choosing Victory” plan, Gaffney on the “Iraq Surrender Group,” the NY Post’s "Surrender Monkeys," Perle, Kristol, et al. Democratic responses have not provided the kind of strategic defense of the ISG Report that would be smart both politically and in policy terms.
The ISG Report did not, true, provide the silver bullet for an Iraq exit strategy, but it did take current policy to the cleaners and set out the alternatives on:
1. Troop commitments – it offers the start of a draw-down strategy including smart arguments on no open-ended commitment and the damage to the US military and global crisis-response capacity of staying in Iraq.
2. It gives some good guidance on overall Iraq political policy – for instance – talk to Sistani, al-Sadr, insurgents – anyone but al Qaeda, support, don’t block, a broad amnesty, postpone the Kirkuk referendum, stop lying on budgets and silencing dissenting voices in the DOD … etc.
3. Speak “unconditionally” to Syria and Iran deploying a combination of incentives and disincentives.
4. Invest urgently and aggressively in Mid-East peace – on the Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli- Syrian/Lebanese tracks. There is a linkage – it’s about re-establishing US credibility, strengthening pragmatists and ending the nightly bloody soap opera of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on al-Jazeera.
US public opinion seems to support the ISG recommendations – 60% of those who are familiar with it agree, 17% disagree, 23% are undecided according to Pew with 69% supporting talks with Syria and Iran.
The International Crisis Group has responded to ISG in its own new report – a bolder reworking of the best parts of the Baker-Hamilton and critique in parts – read that here.
I develop these arguments in detail in a forthcoming TAP piece.
In the New Year – don’t let the neo-cons clinch victory from the jaws of defeat – wisely deploy Baker-Hamilton.
Bush is going ahead with a surge that only 12% of the public supports and no one among the Joint Chiefs.
When you go to battle without the people and without the generals, there's a name for that: Madness!
December 21, 2006 5:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
One would think that the neocons would just go away or, at least, be pursued like Pinochet until they were charged for their many crimes against this country.
But the beauty of the Perles and Feiths is that they don't think they didn't anything wrong.
3000 American dead is a price THEY are more than willing (FOR OTHERS) to pay to sustain their crazed vision.
What is neoconservatism. It's like conservatism but minus any patriotic feeling for this country whatsoever.
December 21, 2006 5:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bush's plan is to run out the clock. Only 2 years, then it's for someone else to "lose the war."
And if thousands of people must die, so his pathetic ego survives so be it.
Bush is already marked as the worst prez ever, so he has nothing to lose. Fear a leader with nothing to lose!
December 21, 2006 6:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Mr. Levy,
I am gladdened to hear someone on the board champion the report. I have read it carefully and have been somewhat taken aback at how quickly it has been dismissed by left, right, and center.
The International Crisis Group statement does a good job of showing the problems of maintaing unqualified support for the Iraqi government but the ISG report has a more complex response to the problem than the criticism suggests.
On one hand, you have the idea of reopening the deals that have shut down any way toward the object of "national reconciliation." This means significantly upseting the status quo of the occupation. On the other hand, completely dissolving the governance that has developed through the political process so far would mean that foreign powers are back at zero, looking for the next Paul Bremer.
I don't think too many nations are going to be interested in a multilateral version of the second option. In this regard, the ISG position takes the more pragmatic perspective.
December 21, 2006 7:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
Impeachment (of Cheney and Bush) and Congress cutting off funding for anything except orderly removal of troops in Iraq is the only way to stop these lunatics.
Tom
December 21, 2006 7:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, those are the acts needed to stop the lunatic executive branch of our government. Of course those acts will not occur. It takes a high order of patriotism to start an impeachment process when a President is acting in such an irrational, lunatic manner. People would become very uncomfortable if they had to learn the facts involved. That discomfort would quite possibly lead to the electorate chosing a group of candidates who promise not to cause such discomfort in the future. How many members of Congress are patriotic enough not to see that as a losing proposition? It isn't 218, that I am sure of.
Hoppy in Sacramento
December 21, 2006 8:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, "madness" is following advice such as Daniel Levy's. The last thing Democrats should be doing is signing on to a wishy-washy plan filled with sound and nuance and signifying nothing.
This is Bush's and his Republican enablers' war. Leave them to hang all together. No Democrat should be so foolish as to volunteer to mount the scaffold with them.
December 21, 2006 8:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
J. McCutchen
My what a difference an election makes! Our brave press is widely bandying the "F" word about these days without fear of being trashed as "defeatist" Al qaeder luvin, Osama suckin Saddamites. From cable to print to the internets.....
William M. Arkin on National and Homeland Security - Failure in Iraq? We've Already Failed
Perhaps it is the ISG's lapse of realism, that Ivo has criticized that accounts for the paucity of defenders? Never fear, though, for I expect that when Bush finally comes out with his "stay the course surge forward to victory" policy (sic) the Dems will be waving the ISG report in the face of every Bush witness at any of 1/2 dozen mega hearings next year.
From cable to print to the internets, 2007 is going to be hellacious
PS .. in a similar vein, Sid Blumenthal's Delusions of victory explores the new Kagan-Kristol-Pletka(!?!?!) axis of evil.
December 22, 2006 4:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
Unfortunately, a number of Demcratic enablers already mounted the scaffold with W back in October 2002.
Tom
December 22, 2006 8:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for the link.
Sidney does evince an ever so smooth style, doesn't he. Little wonder a style-challenged Neanderthal like Drudge came after him.
December 22, 2006 12:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
Why should the Democrats get embroiled in yet another of the Empire Bush dysfunctions? The neocons/GWcons are doing so well all by themselves.
December 23, 2006 6:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
Bush and Cheney are so very much identified with the policies that need to be reversed that one would tend to agree.
In a parliamentary system, the head-of-state's advisors, a.k.a. the Cabinet, could have been switched. For America, that doesn't seem to be a possible or sufficient way out.
In the end, one must assume it will take anohter two years for the U.S. government until it can announce a reversed policy. That may have an advantage: It can be well prepared and anchored.
/Tuomas
December 23, 2006 4:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Too bad for everyone who will die needlessly and their families.
Tom
December 23, 2006 6:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
J. McCutchen
[tip of the hat to IraqSlogger & Truthout]
Concern for the Truth
By Tzvetan Todorov
Libération
Historian and philosopher Tzvetan Todorov is the author of 21 books, including one on the moral life in concentration camps.He is Director of the research center for the arts and language at the French National Social Sciences Research Center.
December 23, 2006 7:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Kevin Drum says it better, and again.
December 23, 2006 10:58 PM | Reply | Permalink