Daddy's Home
Membership in the Iraq Study Group.
The Iraq Study Group is meant to forestall a horrible catastrophe...
...in the United States...
...for the Republicans...
in 2008.
The ISG was conceived in March as the last minute, desperate attempt to by the Gang of 41 to impose the adult supervision on Iraq policy that Bush II so famously evaded by sidelining Bush I’s advisors and pushing 41’s agent of influence in the White House, Colin Powell, into a humiliating corner on the Iraq war.
Well, now daddy’s finally back in the house, and he’s brought his ISG friends with him.
Few friends of Bush I are closer than Robert Gates. As president, Bush I elevated Gates to CIA director and later tapped him to head the George H.W. Bush School of Government at Texas A & M.
Now, after the historic mid-terms, the job of saving the Republicans’ - not George W. Bush’s — bacon on Iraq has acquired a new urgency.
Back in June, Robert Dreyfuss did an excellent job of describing the political dynamics of the ISG and its ultimate objective:
The ISG is the creature of James Baker III, famous as the consigliere to Bush I. It is populated with a broad range of policy wonks intended to give its recommendations broad buy-in and at least a veneer of bipartisanship.
According to the original plan, the ISG was going to issue its report calling for Cut and Run Lite after the November 7 elections. The Republicans would co-opt the Democratic anti-war position and force the Democrats to go along under the bipartisanship banner. With the Democrats committed to the program, the Democrats would be chained to the Iraq anvil as securely as the Republicans are now, and Iraq would become a secondary, easily fudged 2008 campaign issue.
Well, a funny thing happened.
The statesmanly march toward an Iraq disengagement strategy orchestrated by the GOP has turned into an unsightly stampede, perhaps to be mirrored in our disorganized flight from Iraq over the next few months.
The mid-term elections did not deliver at least a GOP Senate and gridlock that the Republicans could continue to exploit. Instead, it delivered catastrophe: an unambiguous repudiation of the Bush policy that has stripped the political initiative away from the GOP.
Now anything that happens in Iraq is viewed through the lens of the mandate that the U.S. voters gave Democrats to wrest control of the war from the hands of George W. Bush.
The GOP started the war. But the Democrats will preside over its conclusion. There are no apparent political benefits available to the Republicans in the wind-down of the occupation and the only political legacy of Iraq for the GOP will be humiliating failure.
So the best and not-unfounded hope of the GOP for 2008 is to rely on the selective memory and short attention span of the American voter.
I think the GOP elders have decided to clear the decks ASAP, get Iraq off the table this year even if it produces the ugliest outcomes imaginable, so that the party can start with a clean slate in 2007.
So, the day after the election, bingo! Donald Rumsfeld is gone. And no attempt to paint his departure as anything other than a massive loss of confidence in the war a la W.
The forgotten man in this equation, of course, is Mr. Lame Duck in Chief himself, George W. Bush.
His strategy of bravely allowing the Iraq sore to fester while his hapless foreign policy team attempted to rack up some points on North Korea and Iran proved untenable for his party — particularly the elements that hope to survive and prosper with a new Republican president in 2008.
Yesterday, in his dutiful reading of Gate’s lengthy resume and Rumsfeld’s political obituary, Bush had the resigned air of the failed CEO who has been kicked upstairs to Idiot Emeritus — or one of those disgraced apparatchiks in Communist countries who learn too late that they are not leaders but minor, easily replaced cogs in a giant machine.
The GOP — and its desire for continued power and wealth — is a heck of a lot bigger than George W. Bush and whatever hopes he had for a legacy beyond corruption, futility, and pretzel-choking.
This is probably a point that 41 made to 43 with some relish when insisting that Rumsfeld go and Gates move into the top spot at the DOD.
Gates, a career spook, is ill qualified to take over the world’s largest military machine and forge ahead in the execution of a bloody, unsuccessful, and doomed counterinsurgency operation that is highly unpopular with the uniformed denizens of the Pentagon.
His elevation signals that we’re no longer even pretending to “stay the course”. Getting the hell out of Iraq is Job One for the Republican Party.
I don’t think the Iraq Study Group has any particularly profound hopes or objectives for Iraq.
Partition isn’t going to work. Sunni areas don’t have enough oil and Baghdad has too many Shi’ites. Negotiation with the insurgents will fail for the same reason.
The ISG is probably simply hoping that civil war can be postponed long enough for us to make a seemly exit, redeploying with the grateful thanks of the central government and avoiding that ugly Vietnam scene, where enemy fighters flooded into the vacuum left by the departure of our troops and we scuttled into helicopters on the roof of the embassy with the dogs of war nipping at our heels.
If the Republican elders care about anything beyond the continued vitality of the GOP, it is to ensure that America appears in control of events and that the generals retain their confidence in the right wing’s ability to extract their troops and careers from an unwinnable war.
Avoiding a horrendous, out of control debacle for America’s armed forces exiting Iraq is probably the main priority of the ISG, especially if they are not deluding themselves that America can contribute anything positive to Iraq while the occupation continues.
And to get the troops out in an orderly “redeployment” - and make sure that the attention of the American voter has turned elsewhere when civil war breaks out in Baghdad — America needs the assistance of Iran and Syria to buy us a few months’ grace period.
And who better qualified to win Iranian trust that Mr. Iran-contra himself, Robert Gates!
I would expect that the new priority given to rapprochement with Teheran means that John Bolton will have to abandon his quest to sanction Iran’s nuclear program and will be recalled to his kennel to chew on his own leg in frustrated rage instead.
I don’t doubt that Iran has serious leverage in Iraq, or that it is interested in seeing U.S. forces out the day after Saddam Hussein is hanged.
Syria is another issue. The Syrians don’t have the reach and influence. And the Sunni insurgents have their own agenda: they are desperate to initiate the civil war and encircle Baghdad before the Shi’ites can get their act together.
If the Sunnis aren’t willing to wait, the Shi’ites won’t be either. Which means, instead of a graceful departure, we’ll be doing it in the middle of a civil war.
Which, in turn, means that the only recourse for the GOP to evade responsibility for the final carnage that is the logical conclusion of this disastrous war will be to trot out the “stabbed in the back by the Democrats” theme.
On Iraq, the true test for Pelosi and Reid will be whether they can keep the political focus lasered in on getting our army out of Iraq in one piece and taking care of the wounded and damaged after they get home, and not get distracted by do-gooderly fantasies about fixing Iraq until after the last American boot has left the ground.
Otherwise, the Republicans will be ready and waiting to accuse the Democrats of “betraying our troops”.
And who better to perform that disgraceful and dishonest task than that incompetent but vindictive and still marginally useful lame duck, George W. Bush?
Maybe it’s still Junior’s war after all.
Even after Daddy came back home.
copyright 2006 Peter Lee
Peter Lee is the creator of the anti-war satire and commentary website Halcyon Days. He can be reached at peter@halcyondays.info
