As recently as two weeks ago, White House officials were leaking word that the president decided on a new war policy in part by doing the opposite of what the Iraq Study Group suggested. The Bush gang was intent on “looking distinctive” from the ISG. As the Washington Post reported, “As described by participants in the administration review, some staff members on the National Security Council became enamored of the idea of sending more troops to Iraq in part because it was not a key feature of Baker-Hamilton.”
And now that the administration is trying to sell escalation to the public, guess which study group the White House is leaning on for credibility? NSA Stephen Hadley wrote the following in the WaPo op-ed this morning:
The Baker-Hamilton report explained that failure in Iraq could have severe consequences for our national interests in a critical region and for our national security here at home. In my many conversations with members of Congress and foreign policy experts, few have disagreed. […]
As Gen. David Petraeus, the new commander of our forces in Iraq, explained in hearings before Congress last week, reinforcing U.S. troops is necessary for this new plan to succeed. Any plan that limits our ability to reinforce our troops in the field is a plan for failure — and could hand Baghdad to terrorists and extremists before legitimate Iraqi forces are ready to take over the fight. That is an outcome the president simply could not accept.
The Baker-Hamilton report supports this conclusion. It said: “We could, however, support a short-term redeployment or surge of American combat forces to stabilize Baghdad . . . if the U.S. commander in Iraq determines that such steps would be effective.”
Indeed, as TP noted, the ISG report is, all of a sudden, a go-to document for the White House, at least when the Bush gang is looking for outside support. Tony Snow was fairly specific recently, telling reporters, “What we have done — if you take a look at page 73, where it talks about building capabilities, putting Iraqis in the lead, and there was even some talk about ‘a surge,’ that’s in there.”
This is just sad.
For one thing, the ISG argued against troop escalation, not for it.
Sustained increases in U.S. troop levels would not solve the fundamental cause of violence in Iraq, which is the absence of national reconciliation. A senior American general told us that adding U.S. troops might temporarily help limit violence in a highly localized area. However, past experience indicates that the violence would simply rekindle as soon as U.S. forces are moved to another area. As another American general told us, if the Iraqi government does not make political progress, “all the troops in the world will not provide security.”
In other words, when Hadley (and Snow) point to the ISG for support, they’re actually citing a source that believes the exact opposite of what the White House believes, at least on the issue of troop escalation.
Moreover, the White House is supposed to be all-too-aware of this. The Bush gang intentionally sent out word to its supporters before the ISG report was even released: the document is DOA. Rove & Co. anxiously waited to see how (and whether) the report would be embraced, and thanks to some pressure from the White House on Bush allies in Congress and the media, the Iraq Study Group was quickly marginalized.
For the White House to turn around now and point to the ISG as supporters of Bush’s escalation policy is not just backwards, it’s breathtaking hypocrisy. Raise your hand if you’re surprised.