The nation has been waiting for far too long for someone in a position of power to offer a coherent plan for the future in Iraq. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, the outgoing GOP congressional majority … none of them even pretend to have a strategy anymore.
Never fear, we’re told, the [tag]Iraq Study Group[/tag] will save us! This “bipartisan” panel — which is conspicuously lacking in even one liberal/progressive — has credible, experienced officials who, we’re told, craft a reasoned, responsible approach. The ISG, we’re told, will be the serious grown-ups, creating a policy outside the normal political freak show in DC.
As it turns, of course, what we’ve been told isn’t quite right. The ISG is a bust.
The bipartisan Iraq Study Group reached a consensus on Wednesday on a final report that will call for a gradual pullback of the 15 American combat brigades now in Iraq but stop short of setting a firm timetable for their withdrawal, according to people familiar with the panel’s deliberations.
The report, unanimously approved by the 10-member panel, led by James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton, is to be delivered to President Bush next week. It is a compromise between distinct paths that the group has debated since March, avoiding a specific timetable, which has been opposed by Mr. Bush, but making it clear that the American troop commitment should not be open-ended. The recommendations of the group, formed at the request of members of Congress, are nonbinding.
Or, put another way, it’s another vague split-the-difference, mushy-middle compromise that will be deemed largely irrelevant about five minutes after it’s released to policy makers and the public.
Based on press accounts, ISG panelists largely agreed on diplomatic measures, but lacked a consensus about troop deployment, specifically how many should stay, when withdrawal could begin, and whether specific timelines should be utilized.
In other words, the [tag]ISG[/tag] is exactly like everyone else.
The result, apparently, is a report that avoids hard answers to impossible questions.
Although the diplomatic strategy takes up the majority of the report, it was the military recommendations that prompted the most debate, people familiar with the deliberations said. They said a draft report put together under the direction of Mr. Baker and Mr. Hamilton had collided with another, circulated by other Democrats on the commission, that included an explicit timeline calling for withdrawal of the combat brigades to be completed by the end of next year. In the end, the two proposals were blended.
“I think everyone felt good about where we ended up,” one person involved in the commission’s debates said after the group ended its meeting. “It is neither ‘cut and run’ nor ‘stay the course.’ ” […]
Committee members struggled with ways, short of a deadline, to signal to the Iraqis that Washington would not prop up the government with military forces endlessly, and that if sectarian warfare continued the pressure to withdraw American forces would become overwhelming. What they ended up with appears to be a classic Washington compromise: a report that sets no explicit timetable but, between the lines, appears to have one built in.
Except we didn’t want or need a “classic Washington compromise”; we need an effective policy that would shake up the status quo.
Former Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.) said this week, “People are looking at us for a ‘solution.’ … I think expectations of our group are seriously overrated.” Apparently so. The final report is still a week away and it’s already DOA.
What’s the bottom line here? The ISG would like to pullback a small percentage of troops away from combat, leaving tens of thousands of troops right where they are. When would this pullback happen? They don’t say. How would it happen? They don’t say. Where would the troops be pulled back to? They don’t say. How long should this take? They don’t say. Why should anyone take the ISG seriously? They don’t say.
Rarely has a commission of any kind gone from saviors to irrelevance so quickly.