What we have is a political document -- a compromise. However, there are those who believe it may prove useful.
National Review editors:
...the ISG report is an analytic embarrassment. But President Bush can still make political use of it by emphasizing its responsible aspects. The report opposes timetables or deadlines for withdrawal. It warns of a precipitate pullout: “The near-term results would be a significant power vacuum, greater human suffering, regional destabilization, and a threat to the global economy. Al Qaeda would depict our withdrawal as a historic victory. If we leave and Iraq descends into chaos, the long-range consequences could eventually require the United States to return.”
The ISG says: “Iran should stem the flow of arms and training to Iraq, respect Iraq's sovereignty and territorial integrity, and use its influence over Iraqi Shia groups to encourage national reconciliation…. Syria should control its border with Iraq to stem the flow of funding, insurgents and terrorists in and out of Iraq.” The ISG does not appear to proffer what concessions it believes the United States should make in order to get Iran and Syria to take these helpful actions.
Implicitly, though, it seems the concessions the ISG has in mind should be made by … Israel.
...the ISG talked to 15 senators (not one of whom was elected for the first time since 9/11, creating a generation bias in the interviews, one which appears replicated in the 10 House members interviewed.,) and that of the 21 foreign officials interviewed, only David Abramovich, the Director General of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was consulted from the state most threatened by the Iranian mullahs and Syrian thugs the ISG demands the US appeal to.
Incredibly, the ISG did not consult with anyone from the democratic government of Lebanon, even as the ISG urges us to reach an understanding with Syria.
Of the 43 "former officials and experts" consulted --including Mark Danner of the New York Review of Books, Thomas Friedman, Leslie Gelb, Sandy Berger, Anthony Lake, Ken Pollack, Thomas Ricks, and George Will-- the ISG did not find it necessary to talk with, say, Victor Davis Hanson, Lawrence Wright, Robert Kaplan, Mark Steyn, Michael Ledeen, Reuel Marc Gerecht, or Christopher Hitchens. The ISG did talk with Bill Kristol. I wonder how long that sit down lasted?
Aside: The ISG consulted Sandy Berger? They consulted Thomas Friedman and George Will? Opinion columnists?
DUBAI -- The Iraq Study Group's report achieved the goal of any blue-ribbon commission: It stated the obvious, emphatically...
A cynic might argue that this laundry list is precisely what the Bush administration was moving toward in its own internal review of policy. But I think that's the point about the bipartisan commission headed by former Secretary of State James A. Baker III and ex-Rep. Lee Hamilton. They have stamped an interwoven "D'' and "R'' on recommendations that seem so familiar you wonder why they haven't been official policy all along. (Some of them have, actually, though you wouldn't have known it from President Bush's bluff and bluster.)
Thus, the ISG report lives up to its advanced billing. The best the "wise men" can come up with is to have our worst enemies try to help us stabilize Iraq. And, apparently, the primary inducement will be to pressure Israel into creating a Palestinian state (as if Iran really cares about that). It's difficult to say which is more pronounced, the craven nature of this recommendation or its lack of realism.
Debating the fate of the Iraq Study Group report has become, for now, Washington’s favorite parlor game. Senator John Kerry has said the report will “change the debate in this country.” Time has predicted President Bush will follow the commission's advice. But responding to earlier leaks of the report, Bush peevishly said its plan for a gradual withdrawal “has no realism to it whatsoever,” while Rep. John Murtha, a leading opponent of the war, called it “unacceptable” because it would leave U.S. troops in Iraq.
The Iraq Study Group's report does acknowledge that "Our limited contacts with Iran's government lead us to believe that its leaders are likely to say they will not participate in diplomatic efforts to support stability in Iraq," but that does not prevent the commission from concluding that "as one of Iraq's neighbors Iran should be asked to assume its responsibility..."
The Iraq Study Group released its long-awaited report today, and while it has some important information on the current state of our operation in Iraq, its recommendations descend from some strange Utopian vision of peace and brotherhood that only exists in the fevered imagination of the so-called realists. The ISG calls for a "support group" of nations surrounding Iraq and relies on their supposed self-interest in a stable and functional Iraq...
T.F. Boggs, 24-year-old sergeant in the Army Reserves, back home from his second deployment to Iraq.
The Iraq Survey Group’s findings or rather, recommendations are a joke and could have only come from a group of old people who have been stuck in Washington for too long. The brainpower of the ISG has come up with a new direction for our country and that includes negotiating with countries whose people chant “Death to America” and whose leaders deny the Holocaust and call for Israel to be wiped from the face of the earth. Baker and Hamilton want us to get terrorists supporting countries involved in fighting terrorism!
If the ISG report is successful in uniting the country in an effort to win the war I will judge it to be a useful document. However, I expect the Democrats interpret the report to say retreat and surrender are now officially our goals. Judging from the name that appear on the list of those who were consulted (and the names that do not appear) I would guess that many of the report's conclusions were predetermined. They went after the answers they wanted.
So in the face of all the mounting evidence to the contrary, despite the claims of both the outgoing Sec. of Def. and the newly approved SOD, not to mention the near-unanimous global voice, YOU and the opinion of the mindless minions that you are a part of, think everyone else is wrong and that the war in Iraq, the one that we are NOT WINNING (and I so thouroughly enjoyed how you and Gates attempted to split semantic hairs over THAT one), will be won with just a little bit of old fashioned American-perseverance.
What do you base this view on? You're fantastic insight? That same guiding principle of insight that has led you to be so wrong for so long now on just about all things political that this site no longer offers nothing more than political comic relief?
I can't wait to see this explanation.
Posted by: ny patriot | December 08, 2006 at 10:17 AM