Wednesday, December 06, 2006

ISG Report: Home In Time For The Elections

The Iraq Study Group report is now out and I am going to set myself the task of wading through the whole thing. Having said that, I'm only doing it because it will now be quoted by all and sundry and I don't want to be the only poli-blogger in the world who hasn't read it.

The quoted chunks I've seen so far are turgidly, mind-bendingly unimaginative stuff - and sometimes just plain dumb stuff - designed primarily to give cover to every single national politicians' urge to cut 'n' run before the '08 elections roll around while still handing ammunition to each politico or pundits favorite foreign policy bugbears. It can be read as an advocacy of surrender by the U.S., as promising a pony when all the ponies are already at the abbatoir, as a reasonable reflection of the current state or an unrealistic refusal to admit that Iraq is already wondering where it is going and why it is in a handbasket. Take your pick.

It's a meisterwork of political prevarication and careful fence-sitting entirely aimed at American voters, rather than proposed real solutions to problems. Everyone (including the Busheviks who will cherry-pick what they like then blame everyone else for not doing their parts) has an escape route when things go wrong - primarily blaming foreigners for not doing their bit, even when their bit is utterly preposterous and undoable by their own interests. Truly, American foreign policy is domestic vote-grabbing that is then inflicted upon foreigners, often to their violent detriment.

Even the authors of the report themselves have an escape route built in, as James Joyner notes:
Ivo Daalder, Matt Yglesias, and Steve Benen observe that the qualifier “subject to unexpected developments in the security situation on the ground… (xvi)” is a rather gaping loophole in the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group.

So it is. But it also makes the report’s recommendations immune to falsification, which is the chief goal of any of these reports. If you’re going to assemble a group of distinguished people to issue definitive pronouncements on something that most of them know nothing about, you can’t very well expect them to put their reputations on the line. Otherwise, how will they get invited to join the next blue ribbon commission?
Moreover, it's all just so much fodder for the outhouse if the Bush administration decides to ignore it totally or partially. Them's the facts for the next two years.

Some analyses worth reading:

  • Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings: The ISG Report Foretells The Present

  • Mathew Yglesias: Lost in the Pony Fields I don't blame the ISG for not having any smarter ideas about this; I don't have any smarter ideas either. But the whole plan founders on this point. Nothing is worth doing absent national reconciliation and nobody knows how to create it.

  • James Joyner: Iraq Study Group-Quick Reactions Folks, if they could just wave a wand and start doing those things [the ISG's recommendations], we wouldn’t have needed an Iraq Study Group.

  • Kevin Drum: PRO FORMA REMARKS ON THE BAKER COMMISSION REPORT Baker is claiming that the report doesn't set out a timeline, but the report itself is replete with references to "milestones" that have to be met if the Iraqi government wants the U.S. to stay engaged. What's more, the report says all combat brigades should be out of Iraq by the first quarter of 2008. What am I missing? In what way isn't this a timeline?

    And what's this about keeping 70,000 non-combat troops in Iraq pretty much forever? That got a unanimous blessing from the commission members? I think that tells you more about who was eligible for the commission than it does about whether this is a good idea.


  • While you're at it, read this Whirled View review of a book that comes out today on the failure of America's public diplomacy. Both review and book were written by veterans of American diplomacy and foreign policy.

    If there are common threads that run through many, if not all, of the chapters in this book, it seems to me one of the most important is that America’s communications with the world have, for far too long, been way too much a one way street - or in Ambassador Anthony C. Quainton’s words “an extended lecture” rather than a dialogue.

    Perhaps this is so because, as former long-time CNN international correspondent Ralph Begleiter writes, “American ignorance about – or putting it more politely, inattention to – the world has contributed significantly to inattention to the U.S. image abroad. . .If we want to improve the way we look to others, we must improve the way we behave toward them. That includes learning more about others as we encourage them to learn about us.”


    That "extended lecture" is a mistake the ISG report makes as well. Eventually, someone has to realise that Iraq cannot be forced into serving U.S. national interest and at the same time become a fully-functional sovereign state making its own choisces. It's one street or the other and those in America who are so keen to blame Iraqis for the failure of the neocon misadventure would do well to learn that lesson.

  • And finally, the BBC proves yet again that when the news hits the fan it is still the world's premier news company. It hits the main points, has some excellent analysis and has a whole bunch of related articles on the sidebar.
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