I think we’ve all been dead wrong about the Iraq Study Group. The president is a whole lot smarter than most people give him credit for, and I’m thinking he pulled one over on just about everyone.
The Iraq Study Group’s report, and the way Bush is spinning that report, seem to support a notion that we have all—conservatives, liberals, and everyone in between—been had.
Look at the uproar from supporters of the war, whose kindest nickname for the ISG is “Iraq Surrender Group.” Look at the plaudits for the ISG from those who want us out of Iraq immediately, and listen to the “We told you so!” editorials echoing through the mainstream media. The EU and the UN have welcomed the report, and most of the Arab and Muslim world think it’s just perfect, especially the Blame-Israel recommendations (cf. Section 4, Recommendations 15-17), including for the first time ever a U.S. call to look into the “right of return” (the concept that would flood Israel with generations of “refugees,” thus effectively ending the Zionist state). It’s a report that should please even Pat Buchanan, notorious America-Firster and Israel-hater.
The report’s been out only a few days, and the uproar has yet to subside. James Baker has managed to draw quite a lot of ire away from Bush and towards himself. Why, you’d almost think it was deliberate.
Perhaps it was. In recent days, President Bush has been referring to the report, and he’s been referring only to the parts of it that support his positions. He has yet to reference any of the parts that he disagrees with. For instance, this is from Saturday’s radio address:
I was also encouraged that the Iraq Study Group was clear about the consequences of a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq. The group declared that such a withdrawal would “almost certainly produce greater sectarian violence” and lead to “a significant power vacuum, greater human suffering, regional destabilization, and a threat to the global economy.” The report went on to say, “If we leave and Iraq descends into chaos, the long-range consequences could eventually require the United States to return.”
The Iraq Study Group understands the urgency of getting it right in Iraq. The group also understands that while the work ahead will not be easy, success in Iraq is important, and success in Iraq is possible. The group proposed a number of thoughtful recommendations on a way forward for our country in Iraq. My administration is reviewing the report, and we will seriously consider every recommendation. At the same time, the Pentagon, the State Department, and the National Security Council are finishing work on their own reviews of our strategy in Iraq. I look forward to receiving their recommendations. I want to hear all advice as I make the decisions to chart a new course in Iraq.
These don’t look like the words of a man who is going to follow blindly the advice set out in the ISG recommendations. This looks like the words of a canny politician who want people to think that he is listening to his critics as he changes his Iraq strategy, yet who has no intention of doing any such thing, let alone of withdrawing quickly from Iraq.
I think we’ve all been had, and that the Iraq Study Group was never meant to be taken seriously. Perhaps that explains the lack of depth and the keen grasp of the obvious in some parts of the report, as well as the baffling advice to engage with Syria and Iran, two nations who are supplying the money, weapons, training, and manpower for the insurgency that is murdering American soldiers, and who have no reason or incentive to stop.
Of course, I could be totally off-base. But this theory explains some of the more mystifying aspects of the ISG.
