What stood out when I watched bits of the Bush-Blair press conference the other day were those reporters who framed their questions with the goal of getting either or both leaders to admit failure, to say it's time to quit. While the press focused on that part of the Baker-Hamilton report that recommends substantial troop withdrawal from Iraq by 2008, both Bush and Blair focused on the part that emphasized the consequences of losing the war in Iraq.
Q Mr. President, the Iraq Study Group described the situation in Iraq as grave and deteriorating. You said that the increase in attacks is unsettling. That won't convince many people that you're still in denial about how bad things are in Iraq, and question your sincerity about changing course.
PRESIDENT BUSH: It's bad in Iraq. Does that help? (Laughter.)
Q Why did it take others to say it before you've been willing to acknowledge for the world --
PRESIDENT BUSH: In all due respect, I've been saying it a lot. I understand how tough it is. And I've been telling the American people how tough it is. And they know how tough it is. And the fundamental question is, do we have a plan to achieve our objective. Are we willing to change as the enemy has changed? And what the Baker-Hamilton study has done is it shows good ideas as to how to go forward. What our Pentagon is doing is figuring out ways to go forward, all aiming to achieve our objective.
Make no mistake about it, I understand how tough it is, sir...
...one of the things that has changed for American foreign policy is a threat overseas can now come home to hurt us, and September the 11th should be a wake-up call for the American people to understand what happens if there is violence and safe havens in a part of the world. And what happens is people can die here at home.
So, no, I appreciate your question. As you can tell, I feel strongly about making sure you understand that I understand it's tough. But I want you to know, sir, that I believe we'll prevail. I know we have to adjust to prevail, but I wouldn't have our troops in harm's way if I didn't believe that, one, it was important, and, two, we'll succeed. Thank you.
Prime Minister Blair echoed the President, reiterating that it's a tough fight, but it's crucial that we win it. He praised the part of the report that provides a way forward.
PRIME MINISTER BLAIR: Look, there isn't any -- as I said a moment or two ago, there isn't any doubt about how tough this is. It's hugely challenging. But what the report did not say is that we should just get out and leave it. What it did say is that it's immensely important that we succeed.
Now, the question is, therefore, how do we do it? And in that regard, I think the report is practical, it's clear, and it offers also the way of bringing people together.
The other thing that we want to do, because this is part of succeeding in this mission, is actually to make people understand that this is something where you've got to try and bring people together around a set of common objectives and a practical set of methods to achieve those objectives.
For the moment Bush and Blair have framed the debate for the American people. By acting as if the ISG report is a set of serious proposals, even the absurdly stupid notion that Syria and Iran can be considered reliable negotiating partners, the President and the Prime Minister confer credibility. Their focus on the dire consequences of failure gain credibility in their turn, and thus they transform the ISG recommendations from being the road map for escape from Iraq into steps toward victory in Iraq.
Meanwhile the mainstream press wasted no time jumping on the road-map-for-escape bandwagon. Trumpets David E. Sanger of the New York Times:
Former Secretary of State James A. Baker III was the architect of the “new diplomatic offensive” in the Middle East that the commission recommended Wednesday as one of its main prescriptions for extracting the country from the mess in Iraq.
But while Bush and Blair spoke approvingly of it, and champions of surrender have found vindication in it, the report has encountered very little in the way of approval, and the study group leaders have done little to help the matter. Bill Bennett's summed up the report this way.
In all my time in Washington I've never seen such smugness, arrogance, or such insufferable moral superiority. Self-congratulatory. Full of itself. Horrible.
If the report is smug, arrogant, and insufferably superior, it is only because Baker and Hamilton themselves are smug, arrogant, and insufferably superior. At their hearing before the Senate their arrogance came through loud and clear.
Baker displayed little of the deference witnesses customarily show senators. At one point, he impatiently interrupted Lieberman's questioning about whether Iran would engage in talks. "We say it in the report, Senator -- it's in the report," he said, noting that the United States conferred with Tehran about events in Afghanistan.
Hamilton also told the senators that they are part of the problem. "I, frankly, am not that impressed with what the Congress has been able to do," said the 34-year House veteran. "I think the Congress has been extraordinarily timid in its exercise of its constitutional responsibilities on the question of warmaking and conducting war."
While Baker and Hamilton claim to be unimpressed with Congress, members of Congress are not all that impressed with what Baker and Hamilton have done, even on the Democratic side of the aisle.
Separately, in another indication of the difficulties the commission's recommendations may encounter in Congress, Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii), a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, characterized the Iraq Study Group report as "theater" and "devoid of any basis in reality" because it offers what he considers overly ambitious plans that almost certainly cannot be carried out.
"The practical realities of these empty recommendations will be clear when we try to implement any of this stuff," Abercrombie said in an interview.
What remains to be seen is whether or not people will come together as Prime Minister Blair challenged when he said, "you've got to try and bring people together around a set of common objectives and a practical set of methods to achieve those objectives." The Democrats, still heady over their electoral victory, will have to decide whether they can still afford to fight George Bush when it means they fight against achieving victory, and in the final analysis means they would be fighting against our troops in the field. We already know which way the media will lead them, but it's no longer an election that's at stake. The President spelled it out for us.
...one of the things that has changed for American foreign policy is a threat overseas can now come home to hurt us, and September the 11th should be a wake-up call for the American people to understand what happens if there is violence and safe havens in a part of the world. And what happens is people can die here at home.
For the moment Bush and Blair have made lemonade out of this lemon of a report. They have found something redeeming in a study that details how to go about losing a war in which your army suffers not a single defeat. Bush will use what can be salvaged from it to find a way forward. But make no mistake, this puts the Democrats on the spot. They can join in the effort to establish a secure and democratic government in Iraq, or they can guarantee defeat by demanding that we quit. But defeat will belong solely to the Democrats.
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